Eight months old

Am I seriously writing a post for my eight month old baby?  This little man continues to exhaust me, but he makes me happier than I ever could have imagined.  He is funny and so full of personality.  He has a bit of a temper when he's tired or doesn't get what he wants right away, but is generally very happy.  He's independent in the sense that he will play by himself, even now that he's started to experience separation anxiety.  As I write, he's on the floor by himself and has been playing with some toys, putting small pieces of plastic and paper into his mouth cleaning my floor, and is now chewing on a book.  His big sister never played by herself when we wanted her to.

In the last week we've seen Baby Boy start to pull up on everything he can find--his sister's train table, chairs, fingers, and pants and surprisingly he can get down okay, too.  He's gotten faster and faster with his crawling and is finally playing with his sister by chasing her around.  Around seven months old he started banging together everything he grabbed and just recently that turned into clapping.  He's also started picking up things and holding his arm up in the air--this has only ended in him dropping something on his head once...so far.

We started giving Baby Boy vegetables around 6.5 months (maybe closer to 7) and he's now been through all of the veggie purees that we'll give him (sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, green beans, and peas) and is also eating finger foods.  Just today he had Cheerios after eating puffs.  He's also fed himself mashed potatoes, which was messy, but he loved it.  We've also been giving him pasta, green beans and peas whole and letting him feed himself.  It's really nice when he can feed himself parts of dinner instead of him eating solely purees so that we can eat our dinner.  The only thing that he didn't love was green bean puree, but seems to eat whole green beans just fine, so we'll stick with that.  Within the next few days we'll start him on fruit and pray that he doesn't stop eating his veggies.  I'm also going to give him some beans that we're having for dinner this week.

Baby Boy has been sporadically using consonants when he babbles, but we haven't heard it a ton yet.

He still loves Itsy Bitsy Spider and I think he's going to be our music lover.  Baby Girl knows song lyrics really well, but Baby Boy enjoys pretty much any music you play for him.

He still has just four teeth, but has been chewing on EVERYTHING over the last week or so.  I don't think I've seen a child put so much into their mouth.  When you snuggle him he'll bite on your shirt.  Whatever he's playing with goes directly into his mouth.  We can't really read him books because he just wants to eat them.

His sleep sucks.  Serious suckage.  I asked The Hubby how many times he thinks the baby was awake last night and we were both pleased to determine that it was only three times.  Let me say it again: ONLY THREE TIMES.  At 8 months old.  Obviously our standards have been sufficiently lowered.

Statistics:
6-9 or 9 month size clothes
Size 3 diapers
No shoes yet, but when I held a pair of size 5s up to his feet, they were only maybe a size too big
More hair than his sister had at a year old :)

Likes:
Chewing, remote controls, facing outward, eating finger foods, music, anything his sister is doing, brooms, nursing, sleeping in bed with mommy and daddy so he can nurse all night long, being upright, getting into everything that he shouldn't be touching, Christmas ornaments

Dislikes:
Going to sleep, being ignored, being tired, being hungry, having his diaper changed (or anything that requires him to hold still), waiting, his car seat

7 months development, cont.

So I was hanging out with my boy and realizing that there were things I'd wanted to mention that I didn't.

Right around 7 months we switched to 6-9 month size clothing and you know what? It fit really well. The 3-6 wasn't ridiculously small, but I had so much 6-9 month stuff with long sleeves that the change in seasons necessitated the shift. I'm trying to decide if the sizes are really close or if he had a growth spurt. Probably a little of both.

In the last few days we started giving Baby Boy whole canned green beans. I wanted him to start with something pretty mush-able, so even though I don't love canned veggies, that's what we decided on. He didn't like them at first, but after just 3 nights, his pincer grasp is developing nicely and he actually reaches for them. We still give him purées in the evening and are trying to figure out when to work in more food throughout the day.

Baby Boy is solidly in size 3 diapers. We made the switch a couple of months ago. I have a feeling hell be in them for a long time.

Around 6.5 months, Baby Boy became proficient at getting himself from a crawling position to sitting upright. He can now get to sitting from his back, something I don't think I can do :)

Now I'm going to save this entry as a draft to make sure I'm not forgetting something....

...and I remembered something else :)

Right around 7 months Baby Boy started to bang everything together.  He picks up blocks and bangs them together, tonight he picked up a book and tried to bang the chair with it.

And now I think I need to be done or I'm going to be logging things here that belong in an 8 month post!

7 Month Developments

At seven months old, my little man is really starting to show his personality.  He's really a happy kid almost all of the time, but will let you know when he's displeased, like when he's being put into his car seat.  He doesn't cry, but will squirm and growl at you.  He also uses his growling for when he's excited sometimes.  Baby Boy prefers to be held facing away from you so he can see the world around you and when he gets excited (like when the sitter's kitty comes into the room), his arms and legs start moving everywhere all at once!

As reported a few weeks ago, teeth #3 and #4 (top middle) came through in mid-November.  You can definitely see them both now and it's really changing the way he looks.  He's still adorable, but it makes him look more like a little boy than like a baby.  I'm not ready to lose the little baby parts of him!

Over the last month, Baby Boy has gradually been doing more crawling.  He was a proficient army crawler, but in the last few days has really started to crawl on all fours and will go all the way across the room.  He still has moments where traditional crawling isn't fast enough for him, so he'll growl, drop to his belly and kick and wiggle, then drag himself the rest of the way across the room.

Baby Boy's favorite things are: his sister, Itsy Bitsy Spider, mommy, nursing, cords (computer cords, vacuum cleaner cords, etc.), paper to eat, pureed food, splashing in the bath

Baby Boy's least favorite things are: laying still for diaper changes, getting strapped into his carseat, sleep

I mentioned the growling, but Baby Boy also expresses himself by blowing raspberries all over the place.  He can blow raspberries for the entire car ride to or from the sitter's house, which is close to 20 minutes long.  If he's not blowing raspberries, he's shrieking happy shrieks.  We call it his pterodactyl call.

Sleep is a struggle.  I still mean to do an entire blog post about how horrific his sleep is.  Let's just say that at this point he's still waking at least 4 times per night.  And not calmed without nursing.  But at least he grins at me when The Hubby brings him into our bedroom....

Lastly, just after turning 7 months old Baby Boy started trying to pull up.  The first time I saw it, I came into the room to find him with his hands on the edge of the toy box, up on his knees.  Unfortunately, our floor is laminate and I was afraid he'd slip in his jammies, so I got him down from there.  I don't think he's attempted that since then.  However, he has pulled up on The Hubby--he'll crawl over to him, crawl onto The Hubby's belly, and pull himself to standing while leaning on The Hubby's belly.  He's done it multiple times.  Just this morning I found him trying to pull up on his bathtub, only to have it topple over because it isn't very heavy.

Crazy baby...will you stop trying to grow up so fast?