8 months old and a visit from Aunt Katie!

Well, I may be a few days late on this post, but Abigail's 8 month birthday (Tuesday, May 12th) did not pass without lots of hugs and kisses for our little girl. She is simply amazing, and we were especially lucky to be able to spend her special day with Aunt Katie!!

Playing with the bow on Aunt Katie's shirt. Abby has a new-found interest in bows, buttons, and pretty jewelry!

My big sis lives in Colorado, and she flew out to NY to spend some time with her little niece. We drove up to Bergen to surprise our Grammy and to spend Mother's Day with our mom. (Let me tell you: Grammy was happy to see me and Abby, but the look on her face when she saw Kate was priceless. It has been almost a year since we saw Kate, and Grammy was so excited to see her again!)

Abby loved, loved, LOVED Aunt Katie! They had such a great time together, and Aunt Katie seemed to know just what to do to get a smile on that little face. My sister is my best friend, and to see how much my little munchkin loves her Aunt Katie was such a happy thing for me! :-)

Aunt Katie poking Abby in the belly with her musical inchworm. Abby loved it!

So, in addition to a visit from Aunt Katie, what else has the last month held for Abby? Well, let's see...

• She got teeth! Those two little pearly whites have come in on the bottom, and they are poking out a little more every day!
• She's started to crawl! This is a fairly new development, happening while we were upstate last weekend. At first, Abby would crawl two or three times, then fall on her belly and shimmy the rest of the way on her tummy. Now, she's getting much better about crawling on her hands and knees.
• She is an absolute chatterbox! Da-Da is still her favorite word, but we do occasionally get something different. (For instance, I got a Ma-Ma on Mother's Day!) But, it's still all babble. Abby doesn't equate Da-Da with Carey; she just likes to say it all the time.
• She is becoming extremely expressive with her face. She smiles a lot, furrows her eyebrows when she's thinking really hard, and will cock her head to the side when she looks at you. All of these new expressions are so incredibly adorable, but they're also short lived. We have such a hard time getting them on film!
• She can now pull herself up into a standing position. She's still incredibly wobbly, so we have to be super-careful when she tries to do this. Her favorite place to try out this new skill is her crib. This often makes mommy and daddy a bit frustrated, because we want munchkin to sleep in her crib, but we understand that crawling and standing are very new and exciting to Abby, so we try to be patient and just keep laying her back down to sleep. She usually gets the point. Eventually.

Standing up in her crib. Doesn't she just look so proud of herself?!

So, that's month 8 in a nutshell. Abigail is growing so quickly, and I constantly remind myself to treasure every minute with her because she won't stay this little for very long!