She knows.

With her constantly increasing ability to crawl comes an increasing curiosity about everything she shouldn't be chewing on.

The Animalia. She knows. I say "no" and sometimes, she stares. And waits. And just as I think she's going to let something be, she reaches for it. Slowly. And tries to put it in her mouth. Our floors are fairly clean. I'm not talking about chokeable stuff, like quarters and pieces of lint. I'm talking big stuff. Like a pair of dirty sneakers, left near the edge of her blanketed, safe crawling space in the living room. She can get herself from one edge of that blanket to another pretty easily now. She's progressed fairly quickly from the belly flops that I meant to blog about last week (pushing herself up on her hands and knees and propelling forward, onto her belly, repeating til she reaches her goal) to some actual crawling in the last few days. She has even gotten herself from a crawling position to sitting straight up. It's amazing how lovely babies look sitting up, before they learn how to slouch like the rest of us. She sits really well too although sometimes she'll tip over in her excitement over a towel or toy or water bottle or cardboard box.

She is now seven months old. Amazing. It's time to get a play pen I think. Time to trap her in a confined, safe space. Time to babyproof the house. Before she electrocutes herself or chews up my shoelaces.