Sunday, December 11 . . . EIGHT MONTHS!!!

I can't believe baby is eight months old already. It feels a million years ago and simultaneous yesterday that he was just a baby.

            

We celebrated his 8-month day by taking a million and a half Christmas Pictures. And by a million and a half, I mean 187. In 10 minutes. I surprised even myself at that one.

Ok, let's do the numbers:

At Eight Months, baby can . . .

... Officially crawl on his hands and knees. His favorite place to crawl is the "tunnel" between the couch and the rocking chair.

... Pull himself to standing EVERYWHERE, and even balance for a second by himself. He has also finally learned to fall on his butt instead of flat on his face; it makes the standing much more fun when it does not always end in head injury. His favorite place to stand is on the bed against the headboard, and then throw all the things from the headboard onto the bed (often on top of sleeping mommy).

... Eat us out of house and home. He has loved everything we've given him. We made a bunch of our own baby food, so he gets a few cubes every day. He also has practiced eating turkey at Thanksgiving, and pulled port at a random BBQ place.

... still nurse like a champ. I'm down to two pumps a day at work, and he's drinking about two-three bottles a day and nursing a few times at night. It's one of the few ways I can get him to sleep later than 5am.

... sleep for stretches by himself. He goes to bed between 7 and 7:30 everynight in his crib. Sometimes there is some fussing, but he will sleep by himself for 3-4 hours. After some nursing he goes right back to sleep, and SOMETIMES will go back in his crib. At some point in the night, he fusses and I pull him into bed, though I often don't wake up enough to remember doing this (the BEST reason to side-car the crib!). He usually wakes up around 5-5:30am, when Dad is up and moving around. Sometimes nursing gets him back to sleep, and sometimes I just let him play until Dad takes him for a diaper change before he leaves.

... babble as if he's saying real words. His baby-talk is starting to have some real intonation, and he seems to have two categories of words. "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da" means: "This thing. I like it. Give it to me / I want more." "Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-" means: "This thing. It makes me sad. I don't want to / it hurts." I think that meas Dad is already the fun parent.

Still has two teeth on the bottom, and may be threatening one more soon!