8 Months!

(Sporting her Flamingo romper that I made her)

Our little Bean is 8 months old!  I'm not really sure exactly when it happened, but she seems to be such a big girl now.  She can entertain herself by playing with toys and crawls all over the house.

This past month has been one of the hardest months.  It has been plagued with little sleep and lots of fussiness.  I recognize that I am blessed and spoiled with a very happy baby.  However, even the happiest babies still cry. And boy has she done a lot of that this month!  Bean is now back to getting up multiple times at night.  For about a week, she was also fighting naps, but then another tooth popped up and she is back to loving naps.

I thought that maybe her fussiness and sleeping issues were just linked to being thrown off schedule while on vacation, but we've been home almost a month now and things haven't gotten any better.  I now realize, that I'm just encouraging her to get up at night, since I go and feed her when she cries.  Pretty soon, we'll have to go the "cry it out" route, but I'm just not there yet.  I know I can be in and out of her room and have her fed and back asleep in 10 minutes.  I'm just not ready to lay there listening to her cry herself back to sleep.  So I'll just keep complaining about waking up with her ;-).

Vacation really changed this girl!  She came back a different babe.  The biggest difference is change in her routine.  She now eats solids 4 times a day, nurses 4-5 times, and is down to only 2 naps.  Her schedule now looks like this (note -- her day's schedule is based on the time she gets up, which can be anywhere from 7-8:30):

7:30 - Wake up, nurse, play in jumper
8:30 - Eat breakfast (some sort of baby cereal w/fruit), crawl and play on floor with toys
9:30 - Nap time!
11/11:30 - wake up, nurse, play either on floor or jumper
12:30 - Eat Lunch (veggies & fruit), continuing playing
2/2:30 - Nap time!
4/4:30 - wake up, nurse, crawl around and play
5:30 - Eat dinner (veggies & fruit), play in jumper (or with daddy!)
7:30 - Eat snack (baby cereal mixed with formula)
7:45 - Bath time
8:00 - nurse and hopefully sleep, sometimes she'll stay awake until 9/9:30

I am able to get a lot of stuff done since Bean can play on her own.  When she's in the jumper, though, she tends to cry whenever I leave the room.  I've noticed she would rather be down and crawling than in the jumper.  But sometimes (especially after eating because she'll spit up) it is nice to have her contained in that toy and she'll quickly get over it and amuse herself in it.  I am able to leave the room when she's down and crawling, but I'm constantly popping back in and checking on her.  There really isn't much on her level that can get her into trouble, so usually I just listen to her playing (and can tell what she's doing by her noises).

I love watching Bean play and learn to do new things.  Recently, she's taught herself how to sit up while playing with her toys.  She's not totally sitting on her own, but is able to prop herself up by leaning on one arm and sitting on her hip.  Pretty soon, I'm guessing she's going to start pulling up on things and *gasp* walk!  With learning new things, that also means she's starting to get into things she shouldn't like pulling all the photo books out of the coffee table shelf, touching air vents, and trying to reach for electrical chords and plugs.  There for awhile, we were slapping her hand for touching the air vents, but we realized that with them all over the house, we would have to be hovering over her at all times to prevent it.  So we gave up on that (which has kind of worked because now she's disinterested in them) but will lightly slap her hand over some of the other stuff (especially with the plugs as we want her to learn they are dangerous).

Now we just have to work on the speech.  She babbles constantly, but we've not noticed any particular patterns or words.  She can say "da-da", but she says that about everything (although Steve will argue that she's just wanting daddy all the time).  She does love to mimic sounds we make, like blowing raspberries, yelling, and growling.  Now if only I could get her to mimic "mom-ma".  I'm not getting very far on that one.

Bean has officially graduated into #2 diapers.  There for awhile, she was in #2s at night, and #1s during the day.  She is now in solely in #2s.  She currently wears size 9monhts & 12months in clothes.  She wears a lot of onesies and rompers since it has been so warm out.  At night, she just sleeps in a onesie.  Sometimes I'll put pants on her to sleep in (and to crawl in), but she doesn't seem to care if she has pants on or not.

As for food, Bean is pretty much able to eat all baby food now.  I was really nervous about introducing wheat into her diet since my mom is celiac and Steve's mom has gluten intolerance.  But so far, she doesn't seem to have any issues - what a relief!  New foods this month include oatmeal, applesauce, macaroni & cheese, berries, peach, and puffs.  I've started to notice that she'll refuse foods (even if she ate it fine earlier in the day).  She definitely loves bananas and sweet potatoes.  She doesn't like peach (unless mixed with other things like squash and apples) and has started to refuse green beans.  When she refuses something, I generally blend it in with something else and she's okay with that.

(Hanging outside while Momma & Daddy work on landscaping.  She is not a fan of grass and pretty much stayed on the blanket.  Another change this month - she'll use other pacifiers than her preferred "gumdrop".  Although, she'll just chew on the other ones and not really suck.)

(For Father's day, Bean got daddy a matching Ikea chair.  Okay, so I guess that's not a gift for daddy, but the two can now bond in their matching chairs.)

(Such a big girl trying to sit up while playing!  Notice all the balls in the picture?  They belong to the toy that she's sitting in front of.  She can hit the hand all by herself which makes the toy sings and sends the balls down the slide.  She loves it.)

(Trying to show off her new tooth.  She now has her 2 front bottom teeth.)

(Big girls now bathe in big tubs!  Even though I hate having to bend over the big tub to wash her, it is so much better having her bathe in her tub in the big tub instead of on the sink.  Now I don't have to worry about her falling out.  She seems to enjoy bath time much better now, too.  She loves to splash and play with her rubber duckies.)

(Seriously, doesn't she look so big?!  She now sits in her booster seat at least 4 times a day.  She also uses a sippy cup to drink water and can feed herself puffs!  While I'm working on dinner, I'll either have her sitting in the chair eating puffs, or just roaming around the kitchen floor.  She has discovered measuring spoons and cups and absolutely loves playing with them.  One evening, she held a measuring spoon for a solid hour!)

(Even though she's become such a big girl, she's still a baby!  I love looking at her sleeping with her pacifier and blanket.  She's really become attached to this little blanket my sister crocheted for her.  She now sleeps with it for every nap & at night, and takes it with her to church.  We still don't have a video monitor, so for the longest time I wasn't sure how she was sleeping - since she's always on her hands and knees crying when I go in and get her.  I had to wake her up from a nap one afternoon and discovered she's a tummy sleeper - just like her momma!)