Baby Paul: 8 Months

Our little guy turned 8 months yesterday. The last month was a healthier one for him, thank goodness!
Firsts:
- He's on the move! He started to army crawl over the weekend and gets better and better at it every day. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks forwards and backwards but hasn't quite figured out how to fully crawl. I'm guessing he'll figure it out in the next month. For now it's fun to watch him army crawl - it's so much work so he does a lot of grunting. Ha!

-He got his 2nd and 3rd tooth this month so now he has two on the bottom and one on top. You can see the bottom teeth in the photo below. Another tooth is coming in on top so I imagine he'll have 4 teeth by the end of this month!

- He celebrated his first Halloween. He dressed up as a hedgehog. We only went to one house - our neighbors - on Halloween as Paul goes to bed around 6pm. They thought he was super cute and we got lots of comments/reactions when I posted his picture on facebook.

- He's much better at sitting up and can sit independently but he doesn't really like to sit up so he doesn't do it very often. He seems to prefer being on his belly so he can move around!

Challenges:
- We're still struggling with fluid in his ears. We had his ears rechecked mid-month and while he didn't have an infection he still had fluid so it seems like a waiting game until the next infection arises. We see the ENT later this month and I think they will proceed with tubes if the fluid is still there since it's impacting his hearing.

Eating:
- His daycare teachers starting giving him solids this past month as he was showing interest/signs of readiness. They have had WAY more luck than we have. He ate all of the oatmeal cereal they gave him the first day so I tried giving him some at home and he pushed it out with his tongue. So I bought the (organic) brand daycare serves and he eats that. I guess he has fancy tastes. ;)

- On week days he usually only gets solids at daycare (cereal for breakfast and a veggie or fruit puree for lunch). On the weekends I give him cereal in the mornings and let him "play" with other solids at lunch time. I say play because he really does not eat much when he feeds himself. I was so sure I would take more of a baby led weaning approach where they eat what you eat and feed themselves but since he barely eats what I give him, we are relying more on purees. We tried giving him hard boiled eggs and toast with peanut butter and jam a couple of weeks ago. He ate some of the peanut butter off the toast but he wouldn't eat the eggs and made his usual 'why are you torturing me' face when he tasted the raspberry jam. Another day I gave him some GF pasta and he had no interest in that. I ended up giving him another pickle since he loves to gum and suck on them.

Pickles > GF pasta

Growth:
- He weighed 15.5 pounds at his mid-month appointment which is almost 5th percentile for weight!
- He's still in 3-6 month clothes. Maybe by December we can move up to 6-9 month clothes? He doesn't have a ton of clothes so he wears the same things over and over and over again.

- Sleep remains a challenge. For the first half of the month he was waking up 4-5 times a night. After we confirmed he didn't have an ear infection, we started to let him cry for 10 minutes before going in to feed him. Now he's waking up about 2-3 times a night which is an improvement but still a lot of wake ups for an 8-month old baby. Hopefully he starts to sleep for longer stretches soon because mom and dad are tired!!

- He's more and more interested in toys each month. My mom and dad got him some "little people" animals for Halloween. He loves to look at them from every angle - he twists the toys back and forth to get a full view of them. It's funny to watch him discover the word. I put the animals in his shape sorter bucket - he loves sorting through them and dumping out the bucket of toys.

- He loves "rough housing" with daddy. He was giggling and squealing with delight when Phil hung him upside down.

- He also love bath time! He giggles and shrieks when we take his clothes off - especially when it's an outfit we can pull off of him, like a one-piece romper or onesie. Phil has made a game out of this and he just loves it.

- He's still small enough for his whale bath tub. We don't have any bath toys since it's such a small tub but he likes playing with the wash cloth and the measuring cup I use when washing his hair.

We love bath time!

- Really there isn't much Paul doesn't love. He is a very smiley, happy little guy as long as he isn't really tired or hungry. We are very lucky to have such a sweet, happy boy!

The months fly by and each one gets better and better. In my mom's group there are several moms that feel sad about their baby growing/changing but I can't say I feel that way yet. I just love watching him grow, change, and figure things out. There are aspects I miss from the newborn days, like how he would sleep anywhere and how cuddly he was. But overall, I MUCH prefer this stage and I think it's only going to get more fun! I *think* we will have a second so maybe I will feel more sad about my baby growing when I know it's our last? We'll see!