Crawling, sitting, standing

In 18 days (the time from my last post to this one), Maegan has learned to:
-Crawl
-Go from crawling to sitting and back again
-Pull herself up to standing
-AND the spitting up has greatly decreased!

For her 8 month picture, I tried taking her to a part of our yard where a lot of wildflowers are blooming, but I didn't succeed in getting any good shots, either due to shadows or Maegan bending down and picking up dead leaves. In the picture I posted, she is about to eat some of the leaves...but I stopped her. Next year when our trilliums are blooming, maybe we can get some cute pictures of her sitting in the flowers. We wanted to this year, but never got the chance before they were done blooming. We have a large patch of them north and east of our house in the woods. For non-Michigan natives, here's where you can read about trilliums, which are somewhat rare wildflowers: (Trillium link)

In the other picture, you're seeing what we normally see for most of the day--her tongue sticking out. The only time I get to see her lips is when she's asleep. :) Our friend Randy said of her habit, "I know I've been greeted when she sticks out her tongue at me."

Other fun notes: we have started giving Maegan finger foods that she can gum such as cheddar cheese and fruit such as watermelon. She is able to pick up small pieces and feed herself now! Whenever she sees us eating, she leans forward and opens her mouth, which means, "Hey! Let me try some!" Tonight she tried dill pickles (which she liked) and sweet pickles (which she didn't like). She does pretty well at drinking from a cup now, too, although she often wants to bite the cup.

We're looking forward to a long weekend--Memorial Day! And then a short week at work for Lori (Tues and Wed) and then Grandma and Grandpa Armentrout (Dave and Kathy) arrive from Phoenix on Thursday!

In other news, Matthew will start a new job as a Network Administrator at Lake Michigan Credit Union in 2 weeks! (LMCU link) It is located just down the road from where my office will relocate in July, so we'll still be able to carpool.