i will cherish these photos forever! my good friend christal took some photos of colsen and i around our place while she was in town visiting family. (christal also took our maternity photos when we lived in st. louis!) i am so in love with them and she captured colsen's silly smiles perfectly ;)

that grin of his! it melts my mommy heart and makes me want to just squish his chubby cheeks. he loves to sit in front of the porch door and look outside. recently he discovered the curtains and plays in them as well. now that the weather has been feeling more like springtime rather than the winter, i'm anxious for him to be crawling so we can play on the playground nearby! so instead, we go on walks together, which is just as nice. 

we're getting so close to moving in! any excuse to go check out the house nowadays is what we do :) ...until they installed the locks on the doors so now we can't just waltz right in anymore. we're a few weeks away from moving in and that's all i have on my mind - except i'm trying to forget about the whole packing/unpacking ordeal. since we've been married, we've lived in 4 different states, so knowing that this will be the last time (for a while) that we'll have to pack up and move, it's really exciting. we're hoping it's not much longer that we'll be official home owners!

one of my goals this year is to take more photos of colsen and i together. i take a million photos of just colsen every day, and i have several images of kevin with colsen, but barely any of just him and me. these were taken on my iphone one day after a good photographer friend came by to visit (who took photos of colsen and i together and i'm so excited to see them!).

lately colsen has been super clingy to me and i secretly love it because then i can cuddle him all i want :) i figured i could either be annoyed by it, or enjoy this special time i have with him before he doesn't want my millions of kisses and hugs every day. something that i am incredibly thankful for is the bond that we've developed and i feel that through nursing him, it has strengthened the special bond between us. it's been tough having to deal with his allergies which means that i have to deal with it personally too - but i know that by nursing him, it is the best thing for the both of us.  i would love to nurse him past a year old, so we'll see what the future holds with that!

it's been so fun observing colsen grow, develop new skills and reach each milestone. i think his age right now has been my favorite so far (and i'll probably have a new favorite age in the future). it's my favorite because he hasn't learned to crawl yet but he's able to roll around, play with his toys on his own for some time and sit up on his own. we get him to laugh more and he is all smiles for me! we have this thing where i reach my hands out to him and say "up!" and he'll grab on to my hands and i'll pull him up to a standing position and he loves it! it's little things that we do together that make motherhood so joyful.

this kid loooves to look at books and flip the pages by himself. the book in his hand is currently his favorite to read. it was also one of my favorites when i was little. whenever i read it to him, i look down to catch him smiling. especially at the "chicka chicka boom boom" part. it's the cutest thing.

our little one has accomplished quite a bit this past month and we're so proud of him! i know i say this every month, but man, time flies by! i can't believe i now have a 7 month old!

noteworthy things this past month:

+ sits up great with no support!
+ loves to roll around every where. if we put him on his stomach though, he immediately rolls to his back. it might take him a while before he's crawling, so we'll see about that!
+ still HATES bottles (and we've tried many of them...) BUT he's getting more used to drinking out of his sippy cup and likes to hold it himself (so yay!)
+ doesn't take his binky anymore and rarely ever sucks his thumb
+ we sleep trained him a couple weeks ago so now he has learned to soothe himself to sleep (!!!) without a binky or being swaddled.
+ he's now sleeping 11-12 hrs straight through the night
+ loves bouncing - on our laps or in his high chair
+ he broke out in a big rash all over his neck and stomach due to the canned baby food i bought so now i'm strictly making all of his food homemade
+ as for his eczema, we got his blood tested to see if he has any known food allergies and find out the results in a couple days - we're hoping to have some answers soon!
+ transitioned to taking 2 naps a day (and we're still figuring out the best kind of schedule for him. it's a work in progress)