You are eight months old (yesterday), and every day you seem to get more and more personality. It feels like yesterday you were just a blob and now you are your own little person. The thing that sticks out most to me this month is that you are developing preferences. And not preferences like “oh, she likes sleeping” or “her favorite food is milk,” but specific things like an obsession with the letter “O” in your puzzle name stool. Or the walkie talkie in your train toy. I’ll look away for a second and you’ll be across the room, under the Christmas tree grabbing the walkie talkie. In fact, we had lost it one day and you crawled across the room, dug into the toy box and promptly pulled it out. It’s like you knew it was in there all along! We are so enjoying watching you learn!
This month was a month of firsts. First Halloween. First Thanksgiving. First vacation. First time meeting your great granddad. It was fun watching you experience all of these things, but some of them resulted in a hiccup in your sleeping routine. We had gotten you to sleep in your crib pretty consistently (and we are pretty much back to normal now) but for a couple weeks you would only sleep in your rock n play with Sesame Street on. It wasn’t a great sleeping situation for any of us. Speaking of sleep, you’re still a bad napper. I took a picture of the one day you napped in your crib. It lasted an hour and a half, and it felt like a miracle.
You have become obsessed with solid foods. When we eat, you kind of chew along and make little baby bird faces and noises until we give you something to eat. And you’ll eat pretty much anything! Today we gave you turkey chili and you gobbled it up (pun intended)! One day you snuck some paper into your mouth and I had to give you the Heimlich maneuver. It was pretty scary.
You are very mobile these days. You mostly scoot around using your arms and feet to propel you, but you can crawl and are starting to stand. The other day, I was doing something on my computer and felt something on my leg and realized that you were using my pant leg to pull yourself up. That was the first time that you pulled yourself. You were so proud of yourself for doing it, but we, of course, made you do it another five times until you got frustrated that you had to keep working instead of getting cuddles.
Your skin is starting to show its Roeder-Luders colors. The air has gotten cold and dry making your face dry and chapped. We are trying our best to keep it moisturized, but the moisture from the paci is working against us. We are giving it to you less and less and you seem pretty fine with that.
You’re holding out on us for a first word. You make lots of noises, but aren’t really making any word-like sounds. You also haven’t sprouted any teeth yet. People have been telling us you are teething for months and months because of how much you drooled, but that has actually calmed down now and you are still toothless. I’m still nursing you, though, so that is fine by me!
Christmas is just around the corner and we just decorated the house. You are too young to fully appreciate the twinkly lights and the excitement of presents, but we are trying to create traditions for us. We cut our own Christmas tree and have started weekly “Advent Dinners.” I made us all new Christmas stockings that I can’t wait to stuff full of presents for you. As always you are our sweet, sweet little baby and we love you more than you will ever know. Although I want to keep you small and innocent forever, I can’t wait to see your personality continue to grow!
