Dear Will,
Happy 8 months my dear Little Man! I cannot believe 8 months has passed by so quickly. It seems like yesterday we brought you home from the hospital, then I blinked, and now we are here. This is just crazy. You are such a adorable and loving little guy. You seriously have an awesome personality and I still can't believe that you are ours sometimes. We got pretty lucky.
This month you also got your first two teeth. All that teething leading up to it and you did remarkably well when they actually cut through. Your first cut through the day we went to Animal Kingdom and it didn't bother you during the day. That night you did not sleep well though. Your second cut through two days later and again only bothered you at night. Kenzie was similar in that she always got two teeth at once just a day or two apart so I wonder if you will do the same. I do not see any new teeth on the horizon, but you have been extremely drooly lately and you are starting to chew on your hands again which you did shortly before your first teeth showed up.
You are still quite the nursing champion. We are down to you only nursing about 5 times a day. Sometimes I throw an extra nursing session in there depending on your mood and how you are doing that day. I have given up bottles. Not worth the hassle. However, I have started working on getting you to take milk from your straw sippy. You are doing better. It takes you forever though. You would rather play with the straw, usually. You will drink it eventually, however. At least, for me. We are hoping to go out for our anniversary next month and Nana is going to stay with you and Kenzie. So, she will try to get you to have some milk. As far as eating solids goes, you are still loving food. Now, I'm not sure if it is just your palate or what but I tried to buy a few premade food items (made by Sprout and Plum) for our vacation and you refused to eat any of them. This was despite the fact that I have made you the same combinations of some of the pouches and you gobbled up the food at home. Not sure if it was just you being strange or if you didn't like the flavors. I admit that I tasted them and I didn't like them myself whereas I have tasted all the food I have given you and I have liked everything else. No worries. We are back home now and you are back to getting what you are used to. You periodically have yogurt for breakfast now and we have added cheerios to your finger foods. You prefer puffs for now because they disintegrate easier, but you are also taking a liking to cheerios.Your issue is usually that you can pick them up but you do not always get them to your mouth. You also tried spaghetti squash. You weren't quite sure about that one, but I think it was more texture. I also gave you a tiny bit of chicken. You were okay with it and we will be starting more meat this coming month. You are definitely getting better at picking foods up on your own.
Sleep has been a bit iffy again this month. We are fairly used to it. You are doing very well with napping. You take two naps a day (at least). Sometimes you take 3 if you have one or two in the car because those tend to be much shorter. For the naps you take in your bed, you typically sleep anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours. Those 3 hour ones are NICE. Haha! At night you go down really easily most of the time. I nurse you right before bed but you are usually awake when I lay you down nowadays. You roll over onto your tummy, tuck your legs under you, and go to sleep. You are still waking 2-3 times a night. Sometimes you still wake more often but those days are becoming less frequent. On vacation you didn't sleep as well but I believe that now that we are home we will get back to our normal routine fairly quickly.
You still love your baths. You get them about every other day still. On no bath days we typically still need to clean your head and hair because of the helmet, but you just don't require a daily bath. It isn't good for your skin anyway. You also love the pool. I think you are definitely a water baby. On vacation you loved going in the ocean and pool. You didn't even fuss when a wave washed over us. You are just at home in the water at this point.
You have started developing some fun motor skills this month. You beat on EVERYTHING! Maybe you will play the drums like Daddy. Everything is a drum. Tables, upside down buckets, random other toys... you get the idea. If it makes a noise, you bang on it like a drum. You are also working really hard on learning to clap. You have met at the midline a couple of times but it isn't anything really developed yet. When I clap for you and try to encourage you to copy me, you stare at me so intently as if you are attempting to figure out how to do it too. You will put your hands up and look at them, then back at me. Like I said, you have succeeded a couple of times, but not many yet. I think we will have that skill down pat in the next couple of weeks. After you attempt it on your own a few times, you eventually just start playing the drums again. You are also learning to wave. You sometimes flap your whole hand arm up and down at people and sometimes you stick you arm out in front of you towards a person that is saying hello to you and as you put your arm towards them you say "hiiiiiiii". It is quite adorable. A woman told me the other day that you waved at her. I didn't see it but she said it was very obvious that is what you were doing. I also witnessed you taking blocks out of a bucket and putting them back in a couple of weeks ago. It was an awesome skill to watch. You did it for a good 10 minutes before getting bored and moving on to something else. I just love watching all these new skills emerge day after day. It is always something.
You are also becoming more and more verbal. You are so much more verbal than Kenzie was at this age. It is sort of frightening. Haha! You have continued to say mama. You do it most when you are upset, but every now and then you look at me and just say "mama!" You did it the other day in Babies R Us and another woman in there couldn't believe it was you that said that. You have also started to say "hi" like I mentioned a minute ago. This last week you have decided that dada is your favorite word. You look at Daddy and call him dada. Then you just babble dadadada over and over again. If Daddy talks to you, you light up and say "dada" again. The other day in the car you were saying "dada" over and over again and as soon as I went to your side of the car to get you out of your seat you looked at me and said "mama!" so you obviously know the difference and are able to convey the meaning of both. You also still love to screech at everyone. One of your other new sounds is "aba" and you love going around saying it to people. If we do it back to you, you laugh hysterically. Apparently, "aba" is quite the funny joke. We have seen a ton of growth in your vocalization skills this month. You are using a lot of various sounds now and talking to us constantly. I know that the brain is an awesome thing and I wonder if this is the reason that you are not crawling yet. Your brain has decided to devote so much energy to you building on your verbal skills, that crawling went to the back burner.
Oh! You are also a hugger now! I seriously love baby hugs and kisses. You will "kiss" us too if you are close enough to our faces, but you much seem to prefer hugs. If you get upset you will hug our necks really tight and if you are standing up and we lean towards you, you will hug us. It is seriously adorable.
As far as other physical feats go, you love to stand. You can pull up on our hands with no issues. If we put our hands out in front of you, you will use your own strength to pull yourself up without any assistance from us. You have also started to pull up periodically on other things. You are still developing that skill. However, once you are standing you can actually periodically stand without assistance or holding onto anything for a few seconds before falling over. A couple of weeks ago I actually stood you up against your sister's bed and you were holding on yourself. You reached into her bed and pulled at her comforter. I realized that you were standing without leaning on anything or holding onto anything. You stood there for about 10 seconds before falling over. It was quite impressive. Usually you can stand for a few seconds but as soon as something distracts you and you look over, you fall.
Interestingly enough.. while you are working on standing you have deciding that crawling is overrated apparently. Haha! If I was asked a few months ago if I thought you would crawl earlier than Kenzie, I would have said of course. Now, I believe that you will be later. You have a little over a week to be faster than her, but I don't think you will. No worries, it is just something I noticed. You can get onto your hands and knees periodically and rock back and forth before collapsing, but you do not move forward often. Now, that doesn't mean you aren't mobile. You are so very mobile. You roll like a crazy person and you have taken to scooting some. It is essentially the product of your rocking but because you aren't always on your knees and just pushed up really high on your hands, you just scoot forward a bit. You also scoot when you are sitting. you put your hands on the ground in front of you and can move backwards, forwards, and in a circle. You have also started putting your knees under you and rolling the top half of your body to the side then pushing yourself forward while not using your hands. One day you will get the mechanics of using your hands and knees together. My favorite way you move though is actually the funniest. You lay on your back, bend your knees, plant your feet on the floor, and then straighten your legs so you are pushing yourself backwards. If you see something you want you will roll around until you are in front of it, then roll onto your back and push yourself towards it before rolling back to your belly to pick it up. Whatever works, crazy kid. I find myself wondering if this mode of transportation is a byproduct of the helmet. Perhaps it is easier for you to move like that at this point. Who knows? All that matters is that you move... and boy do you! I have no fear that you will not learn to crawl (or maybe skip it all together at some point). I am perfectly content to watch your roll your way across a room to grab your sister's book... or better yet... her hair if it is in reach.
So, as of today you have officially been wearing your helmet full time for 1 month. You are doing great! You don't even notice. Actually, I find that I need to watch you extra carefully when you have it off so you don't get all crazy and bang your head. I think you are so used to being able to be a crash test dummy that you don't realize when it is not on and then you tend to hit your head on things. You have adjusted to the heat of it and you barely even sweat anymore outside of what we would expect even if you didn't have the helmet on. I definitely spend most of my time thinking about how nice it is going to be when it is off. No more worrying about wearing it 23 hours a day. No more cleaning it. No more smelly head (other than normal boy smell... haha). There are moments though that I think I am going to miss it. It is just a part of who you are now and it's hard to remember what it was like one month ago when you weren't required to wear it all the time.
We are still dealing with quite a bit of separation anxiety, but it seems to be getting slightly better. Maybe that is actually just wishful thinking... I know one day you will grow out of it. I'm just waiting for that day.
This month you went to Animal Kingdom for the first time. You really liked seeing the animals. You did great too. It was your first hot, all day trip out of the house with your helmet. You were a trooper and we didn't notice anything that was obviously difficult for you through the day. You napped well and when you didn't want to ride in the stroller, you were perfectly content to let me wear you. So, nothing out of the norm.
You also went on your first true vacation. You have been on a couple of road trips, but this was our first vacation as a family of four. We went to the Keys and South Florida for about a week. You did pretty well. I mentioned sleeping, food, and being a water baby earlier. Other than all that, I think you did well with most of the traveling and you were just a go with the flow kind of kid for a week.
I can't believe you are 8 months old already. Before we know it we will be having your first birthday. You are growing so fast, Little Man. If I could slow down time, I would. I am loving watching you continue to learn new things every day though.
You are one special little guy!
XOXO,
Mommy
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