Maxine's New Skills

I ruined my camera's memory card and have no new pictures to show off. But Maxine is making a lot of progress and I thought I'd share her new "skills".
Maxine has started to realize that just because something disappears from her view doesn't mean it isn't there. If you stand in her way of the thing she's trying to see she'll crane her neck to look around you. It is pretty cute.
She is such a good eater! She still loves the homemade baby food, sweet potatoes being at the top of her list. When Raquel was this age (almost 8 months) I don't think she had a big appetite but then I was feeding her Gerber, not tasty, homemade, unwatered-down food.
Maxine is still not really crawling but she does get around the living room quite well by a mixture of dragging/pulling and crawling. She can also balance her body on one side with one arm in the air and one on the ground to steady herself--this is the precursor to sitting up on her own with the next move in the sequence being using that arm on the ground to push herself up to sit.
She is ultra sensitive in two ways. 1) Music makes her want to bob and bounce, whether she hears it on tv or one of us singing to her. When I sing to her she stares at me like I'm an angel or something. Her favorite song, the first song I ever sang to her inside OR outside the womb, is My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean. 2) She LOVES a good back massage. Her eyes will roll back in her head when you massage her back. I'm guessing her little muscles get sore from learning to crawl. She also responds similarly to light touches on her legs, arms and face. At the mall yesterday, she fell asleep sitting on my lap while I ran my fingers up and down her left leg. I couldn't see her face but her head slowly fell forward and Jose looked and saw she was falling asleep. So cute!
Her favorite tv show is Blue's Clues. It really gets her attention.
She can say "dadadadada", "tss", "babababa" and "ah-ba" but I don't think she's actually trying to speak english yet.
When I'm trying to comb her hair, she tilts her head all the way back to see what I'm doing. So I usually give her something to play with while I do this.
Sometimes she puts her hand in the way when I'm changing her diaper. So I also give her something to occupy her hands when I do this.
She likes to scratch everything, even her own tummy. I am teaching her the meaning of "soft" by placing her hand on my face and saying "soft" while running her hand down my cheek softly.
When I'm feeding her she thinks its fun to spray food out of her mouth by making a "tss" sound after I put food in there. So, she is now learning the meaning of the word, "NO", hahaha. When I say "NO" I have to make sure my face has a certain serious expression, otherwise she thinks I'm being funny and she'll just laugh. :)
That's all for now. Thanks for reading.