the speechaholic: Eight Months

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Eight Months

This last month has seemed like there were a lot of changes but I think the biggest change has been getting teeth.. which means teething, which changes everything else. Like sleep. And his formerly always easy-going self is now occasionally fussy. He got is first tooth on May 1st, and the second a week later.

He was not particularly thrilled about this photo shoot.

He is roughly 27.5" long and I haven't weighed him. He is solidly out of 6 month clothes and into 9-12 months. He is getting a lot better at sitting up. I don't quite trust him to walk off and leave him sitting, but I don't have to hover quite as close. He can even recover sometimes if he leans too far to one side, however, he's his own worst enemy with arching his back and throwing himself backwards. He seems to have the beginnings of some intentionality in his movements. In the walker, he seems to be trying to follow one of us around (although he can only go basically backwards and forwards) and I think he's starting to use rolling to get to things now. He enjoys reading books, but mostly to look at the pictures and pat the pages. Bonus if the book is textured, then he's all over it. I see his little pincer grasp starting to emerge too.

Chewing, no.. not chewing.. Reading with my mouth. Ya.

We also introduced 'food' this month but in the end, that's getting put on hold until next month. We started with breastmilk yogurt, which the first time he had it, he loved it! Couldn't get enough of it or the spoon. Then that night he threw up four or five times and I thought it must not have agreed with him. Then the next day (in the car) Emerson threw up and the following day Blake and I were hit. It's so strange that it started with him. I held off on feeding him more for a few days and when I tried again, he was really adamantly against me putting anything in his mouth. I put some on his tray and he enjoyed playing with it but he didn't make any attempts to put it in his mouth (and trust me, he's good at putting things in his mouth). So we'll try again next month. I'll do breastmilk kefir next time because it's even more probiotic rich than yogurt (and easier to make) and probably egg yolk and avocado.

Another new thing this month is his... we'll call it communication. He did start putting his hands up when he wants picked up and he has a certain way of telling me he wants to eat. The kicker is that all of a sudden when he's playing with something and it's taken away (by me, Emerson, or he drops it) he really throws a fit. I'm not sure if that's communication or a behavior but it really surprised me. He just clouds up and rains. I think it surprises me so much because he doesn't really cry unless he's really, really hungry and tired (like in the car when I can't stop to feed him). Otherwise he mostly just whines. And it's just such an obvious tantrum, so classic. I think I'm a little jealous actually. I look at him and think how many times I wish I could respond that way ;). And because I'm mean, here's a video of it.

There you have it. Our little guy that loves his little world. There aren't as many photo shoot pictures because he just wasn't having it, and because a lot of the time he was tolerating it was taken up by our photographer in training ;).