Happy Together: 8 Months Old!!

Henry turned 8 months old on 10/26. It is hard to believe our sweet baby is that old. We are having so much fun with him. His personality is certainly developing, and he is becoming more and more vocal and is developing his likes and dislikes. This is entertaining for us to watch his personality come out. I am going to try to streamline my monthly Henry updates so it is not just a huge paragraph. Here goes...

Eating: Still nursing about every 3 hours. He eats fruit around 8:30 each morning and sometimes cereal mixed with it. I have discovered that he doesn't really like the cereal, but that plain fruit he will generally eat now which is great! Banana is his favorite, so I can mask most vegetables with a little dollop of banana on the tip of the spoon. He eats a vegetable or veggie/fruit mixture most evenings around 5 or so. He doesn't love baby food in general, but he does tolerate it now and does not cry. We introduced little finger food rice cake things, and he really likes those. I think he is going to like to feed himself. He has 4 teeth (two top, two bottom) and the ones on either side of his front teeth are coming in currently. They are about to break through. Eating in a restaurant is getting difficult. He lunges for everything on the table and screeches loud so everyone can hear-we have to go to loud places from now on to drown it out! He sits well in his high chair at restaurants, though, and will eat a mum-mum for distraction.

Sleeping: He takes a 2 hr nap starting around 9:30. I have started to push his afternoon nap later so that he can be happy later in the evening for when Steven gets home. We push for laying him down around 3:00 and will usually sleep around 2 hours, then gets a bath at 7:00 and lays down for the night at 7:30. So, in general he is staying awake longer stretches now. We were getting up with him in the night, but the day he turned 8 months old we decided to stop going into his room to pat him at night. He is doing great with it. He still wakes up, but self soothes now. It almost seemed like he was getting madder with us going in and patting him, so this is much better. When he wakes up he is so happy. It is so sweet to see that smile after each slumber.

Playing: Henry loves playing on the floor and can play by himself for a long time. He goes from toy to toy and hits them, examines them, and puts them in his mouth, pokes at the buttons, etc. He kind of rotates in a circle on his bottom and then eventually gets on his belly and plays that way for a while. He also loves to play with us on the floor and loves "pea-pie" and "where's Henry". He is not crawling yet, but when he gets on his belly he raises up on all fours and this week has been really raising up his booty and rocking back and forth. I think it is only a matter of time before he crawls. EEK! He does fine with the jumperoo and walker for a while, but is entertained for longer periods of time on the kitchen floor if I give him a wooden spoon and rubber headed spatula. That can keep him busy for quite a while! Who knew? We got him a swing for outside and he loves it. Smiles and smiles, then gets really calm and will even close his eyes. Can stay in it for a LONG time. Likes books...looking at them and chewing them, too.

Other: Henry lets us know when he does not like something. He arches his back and fusses when he does not want in his car seat or to be put down or if he is tired (see the last 2 pictures for examples of this! He was ready for nap, but I was trying to do a photo shoot!). He squeals and screeches A LOT now. He knows to cry to be picked up and immediately stops crying. Stinker. He definitely knows me now and has had a little bit of separation anxiety at church. It is always bad timing at church for some reason so he is tired when it is time to go to nursery anyway, but he cries in there and we have gotten called to pick him up early a few times. Just this week he was fine in my arms, but as soon as I handed him over to the nursery worker he puckered out his bottom lip and started to really cry. When I picked him up afterward he wanted me and no one else. Cried with Daddy! Shocker! He still does great at school, though, and is happy when I drop him off and when I visit him. He tucks his head in to our shoulder a lot now and it is so sweet. He is very loving and will "hug" us, too, by putting his arms around our neck and squeezing (unprompted!). It is SO precious.

Happy 8 month birthday, baby boy. Everyday with you is a sweet adventure!