8 on the 8th

My mom mentioned that Ally is 8 on the 8th today and I thought that would make a good blog title. She won't be 8 on the 8th again until she is 8 years old, and we don't want to think that far ahead.
Ally is doing quite well. She keeps learning new things. It's funny to see her work through problems like how do I get that toy when this toy is in the way or just to learn new things like what is that thing on the ceiling. This morning when she got up (at 9 am!) she was intently studying her ceiling fan. So, I showed her how the light works and we turned it on and off a few times. Then, as we walked through the dining room she kept craning her neck to see the light over the table. So, we turned that one on and off a few times. In the kitchen she studied that ceiling fan as I got her bottle ready. Then, when we went into the living room to have her bottle, she kept staring at the ceiling with a puzzled look on her face. We have two small recessed lights in that room, no large fixtures like the other rooms and she gave me a look that I swear said "where is the light in here?" She is a rather bright girl.
Ally has learned a few new tricks. She loves clapping. She just started really doing it well last week and now she does it often. Mike got Guitar Hero for the Xbox and Ally will clap for you and sing along as you play. The other day she clapped when Mike got home, I thought that was really sweet.
She is working on her crawling, but it is more of a scoot. We sit and laugh because she can get the crawling motion with her right knee, but her left leg stays straight so she goes in circles.
She does the 'indian noise' completely on her own now and today I caught her blowing bubbles at herself in the mirror.
We are also finding that we are the parents of a screamer. Not the unhappy screamers, but the 'look at how cute and happy I am' screamer. Ally really enjoys being the center of attention anywhere we go. If she thinks that there aren't enough people paying attention to her, she'll get loud. We were out to dinner with friends the other night and the restaurant was rather loud and Ally was happily shrieking and anyone who would look. Then, for some reason, they turned the music up really loud, so, Ally joined in even louder. Generally it's cute, but if she keeps it up long enough it can be a bit grating. We're taking her to the Cleveland Art Museum on Thursday, so that should be fun :)
Ally has also be working on standing up. If I sit with her at her jumper toy, she'll use the side bars to pull herself up and stand to play. She is also getting rather good at holding on to the couch to stand and support herself.
She is really good at going for what she wants. Today she pulled all of her books off of the shelf I had them on. I watched her keep looking at them all and pushing them aside before I realized that she was looking for one specific book. We got a book with Elmo from the library that she loves. At the end of the book there is a pop up Elmo and she loves to watch him pop up over and over. The book is yellow and I realized that is what she wanted when she kept scooting over to another yellow book and then pushing it away when she saw no Elmo. I keep the library books separate so I had to get that one down so we could read it. There were instant, loud, shrieks as soon as she saw it.

And finally, Ally is loving the Christmas season. We spend lots of time watching the lights blink in our front window. Ally went to see the Christmas tree display downtown and while she seemed more interested in the therapy dogs that were there, she did love looking at several of the more flashy displays. And she is very intrigued by our Christmas tree, though she doesn't try too hard to go after it. I gave her a bulb to play with and she thought that was fun.(This is Ally and her pal Reese. Reese is one of the many many girlfriends that Ally has, and will have as ALL of our friends are having Baby Girls! Congrats to Danny and Nicole and their new Baby Girl!)