8 Months of Joy

My Pumpkin Pie,

My oh my. You’re eight months old. You’re growing into a precious little lady right before my eyes. Just the other day, your Auntie K said you don’t look like a baby anymore and that you are looking more and more like a toddler every day. I won’t believe it. I just won’t.

My guess is that you weigh somewhere between 17-18 pounds but that’s totally just a guess. We measured you yesterday and you are now 28 inches long. You still fit well into 9 month clothes but I’ve been sneaking you into a few 12 month things on warmer days, too. You wear a size 4 disposable and have just recently moved up to the largest setting on your size medium cloth diaper covers.

Here’s how you’ve changed this month:

This has been a busy, busy month. Because you, my sweet, are a busy, busy girl. You are into e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g and I’m amazed how quickly you’ve figured what belongs to you and what doesn’t. I’m also amazed at how quickly you’ve figured out that the things that don’t belong to you are more fun. You keep me on my toes. But there’s no one I’d rather be kept on my toes by than you.

Right now your favourite things to get into are the platters on the side table in the kitchen, the door stop on Mommy and Daddy’s door, the DVDs in the coffee table, and the bar stools on the island.

You’ve made some huge progress this month. The biggest thing being that you are now a crawling machine. You did your first official crawl on April 27th, just shortly after your 7 month birthday, and haven’t stopped since. Every day you get faster and more confident – especially now that you’ve figured out that crawling not only gets you around the room you’re in, but can get you to places you can’t see at the moment. Like into the laundry room with Mommy.

You are also very keen on standing up. You like to hold my hands and stand up and have started taking steps that way. About a week and a half ago, you brought yourself to standing holding on to Nika’s back. Lots of times you pull up on things that just aren’t quite the right height to get you to a full standing position, but rather, a glorified downward dog position. You’re figuring it out though. Each day I can tell your legs are getting less and less wobbly.

Now that you are more steady, you sit up in the big bath tub to play with your toys and splash around. The only problem is that you constantly try to stand up in there, too.With that being said, many a bath time has been cut short and you’ve also become quite familiar with the word “no”.

Although you’ve been doing a waving motion for quite some time, it was about a week ago that you started to make the connection between waving, Hi, and Bye. The first time you waved for real was when you were skyping with Nana. And since then, you haven’t stopped. You wave at people all the time now. You also love to give kisses – to your friends and family, as well as to babies in books and your stuffed animals. It melts my heart to see you scoot over to your pile of stuffies and give each one of them a kiss. You prefer kisses of the open mouth variety and make a cutie pie kissing sound every time. You started the month off by blowing raspberries all the time but that habit has kind of faded away. I must admit, I’m sad about that because it was so cute to see you crawling around buzzing your lips all the time.

You are still nursing 5-6 times a day and you have made huge progress with eating solids in the last month. The list of foods you enjoy keeps growing and growing. The newest additions are mango, chicken, blueberries, grapes, prunes, barley, peaches, muffins, broccoli and watermelon. Some of your favourite flavours include cinnamon and curry. You’re easy to please when it comes to food, that’s for sure. In the past month, you’ve developed some funny habits while eating. You constantly stroke your hair while nursing and sometimes, when you’re sitting in your high chair you flap your hands around your face. I’m not sure if you’re trying to make the same motion as you do when you’re nursing or if you’ve made some associations between the signs for “Milk”, “All done” and food. There’s no doubt that you know the word and sign for “milk” and “puppy”. Two of your favourite things.

You cut your third tooth over the past week and handled it like a champ. You were definitely more fussy and whiny than usual but it didn’t seem to affect your sleep quite as badly as your first two did. I knew another tooth was coming because you were constantly nom nom noming on your fingers. Last Saturday, I noticed the white line on your top left gum for the first time. By Tuesday, I could see a slit in your gum and by Thursday I could feel the sharpness. Yesterday we saw that it had fully cut through and so it will be no time at all until it comes all the way down and you have three big chompers. I wonder how far behind its partner will be?

You still nap twice a day, although it seems you may be in the midst of adjusting your nap schedule. With improvements in night time sleeping, I have a feeling that your sleep needs during the day are going to change. The past few weeks have been a little frustrating, but we’ll figure it out.

You love to be outside. Although we’ve had tons of rainy days, we try to get out for a walk as often as possible. Right now, your Daddy is working just down the road, so we’ve made it down to say hi to him a time or two. You sure get excited when you see your Daddy-o. You’re getting more comfortable on the grass but are also happy to chill in your stroller while we hang out with Dad in the shop, too.

As always, you are my joy. You are the most beautiful, most precious, most wonderful gift. Your Daddy and I love you, enjoy you, and are so very proud of the little girl you are becoming.

Stay sweet, my love.

Mama.