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