8 months, 7 teeth ⇒
Elise is 8 months old and weighs just over 18 pounds (8.3 kg)! She is teething like mad--tending to be a little fast in this department. I have a calendar that came with stickers to document her first year and they stopped providing stickers for teeth at 4. Lucky for her (and us, I suppose) the teething doesn't seem to bother her all that much. She now has 7 - four on top and the third one just cut through on the bottom.
She is well into eating solid foods. She's never met a food she didn't like (except...well...maybe peas--but I don't like 'em either so that doesn't count!) She ate lots of different things when we were in France. Good ol' Heinz could learn a thing or two from Belida--ratatouille, vegetables and cod, vegetables and chicken that actually tastes like chicken. Anyway, I'm making my own baby food now that we are home and having fun coming up with combinations and naming them (Clucks n greens, for example). She is enjoying feeding herself and takes the food off the spoon with her little fingers to feed herself and make a big mess. She loves Cheerios and Baby Mum Mums. I also recommend the Baby Safe Feeder which I stuffed with cold grapes for teething and now stuff it with any sort of fruit or cooked vegetables. Elise has finally gotten the hang of holding this thing by herself so I plunk her in her high chair with some Cheerios and the Safe Feeder and go about making dinner for me and the "Hairy Big Person".
Desperate to get moving! She's been up on all fours, rocking back and forth and pushing backwards for about a month but she hasn't figured out she can move her hands yet (though I know this isn't far away). So I've gone on a major baby proofing campaign. Yesterday I bought a gate to put between the kitchen and our new office, foamy stuff for the fireplace and table edges and a lock for the cupboard under the sink where the garbage is kept. Also the electrical outlets have been plugged and I've removed books and our heavy soapstone carving from down low. Any ideas for what to do with all the wires behind our TV? Beyond that I'm waiting to see what she goes for. I'm actually looking forward to her crawling because even though it will be a pain to keep moving stuff out of her reach, I think she will be happier when she can move about on her own. Tune in in a couple of weeks when I am likely eating those words!
We don't know where she has gotten her talkativeness from - it must be some recessive gene from way back in our family (haha!) She babbles constantly with lots of ba ba ba and ya ya ya type sounds but there hasn't been a trace of Mama or Papa yet. Of course, every time I say "mama" to her, Erin pipes in with "be-shnaaar-kin" so the poor kid is probably confused. It will be funny if she calls me "mama" and Erin "beshnarkin" though!
Her most favourite entertainment these days is: clapping her hands (a new trick), playing with her feet of course, blowing spit bubbles - especially through her soother, and banging or shaking anything in her grasp. She also likes to look at things upside down - especially while nursing which is less entertaining for me but I prefer it to the biting we had at five months. Most recently she has taken to looking down at things so when you hold her she leans way over to one side so she can look down.
She isn't sleeping as well these days but I am hoping it is a combination of still recovering from jet lag and her room being too light. At the moment she goes to bed at 7:00 ish (but we have trouble keeping her up even that late some nights) and waking up at least once a night, usually around 4:00. We are trying not to feed her at that time because I don't want her to get in the habit of eating at that time. I wouldn't mind her waking up at 4:00 if it was just putting in her soother but she is often up for an hour at that time and then I have trouble getting back to sleep. Erin, oh wonderful husband of mine, has been staying up to do the dream feed at 11:00 because I can't seem to make it past 9:30 and he gets up with her in the middle of the night too (interestingly, he hears her crying before I do these days--nice!) I'm a lucky lady, eh girls?
So that's it for the 8 month report. Things are ticking along nicely as you can see!