7 months

Miss Elise is 7 months old already! Yikes! She is so much fun these days...lots of smiling and laughing and rasberries and drool and blah blah blahing. She's a pretty solid sitter-with the occasional topple-and can roll both ways, but prefers to yell for one of us if she can't reach something or wants to move. We've been holding out on solids b/c of her sensitivies to dairy, soy and eggs (through breastmilk...yep, that means I've been dairy/soy/egg free for 4 months now) but we let her suck on random fruits and veggies and she LOVES it (see apple sucking, below). This love of fruit suckage led us to try giving her mashed banana the other day, but it ended horribly with a whole lot of puke on my lap and the floor. Gag reflex, anyone?


She's obviously not wasting away (18 1/4 lbs according to the bulk food scale!), so I'm prepared to wait until her little gagger calms down. Plus, she's becoming a "big girl" in other ways, such as sitting on the potty! Potty talk is rampant in our house these days (Nora is taking her sweet time and digging in her sweet heals when it comes to potty "training") so we started sitting Elise after naps and other random times during the day and she both loves it (great view, comfy seat, lots of praise...what's not to love?!) and has done great (usually about 2 to 4 pees a day and the random poo). Now, I know she can't physically hold her pee for a while now, but feel free to read up on Elimination Communication if you're curious.


Other than those fun milestones, Elise has been working diligently at being absolutely adorable and worming her way into the hearts of everyone she meets. Seriously, I dare you to not fall in love with this face!

Watery fun

August has brought hot days and lots of watery fun for the Bongornos.

Nora loves swimming in lakes and we were lucky enough to be able to visit Matt and Corrie and Tiger up at Matt's family's Michigan lakehouse for a night. It took approximately 2 minutes for Matt to get us from the car to the jet ski where we enjoyed some good tubing and skiing. Nora liked wading, swimming in the innertube, playing with Tiger (surprisingly they settled on Nora being the mama and Tiger the baby for most of their games), and jumping from the dock best - Elise mostly sat on laps, enjoyed the view, and got in some good quality Aunt Corrie and Uncle Matt time.





Nora also enjoyed a paddle boat ride and some good old fashioned silly time with Tiger.



And, nothing says vacation like a waffle ice cream sandwich with a friend!




Back home, we inaugurated the slip n slide with much more jumping and splashing than slipping or sliding. Good times.