Dear Lexi,
Happy eight months my smily little one-tooth grinner! You had quite the eventful month with lots of changes to adjust to. We started off your eight month of life in Colorado, quickly followed by mommy returning to work, you popped another tooth and became mobile. Mommy and Daddy and all those around you had so much fun watching you build your strength and confidence and it brought us lots of smiles, laughs and clapping to cheer you on. With all of these changes, your laid-back personality has just gone with the flow and you have appeared fairly unaffected by everything.
Favorite moments:
The push-up position. You start on all fours and extend your arms by pushing on the floor and eventually straighten your legs resulting with you in the push-up position, only to be extremely confused as what to do next. So you just lie onto your belly or sit back down.
After building lots of strength from the push-up position you learned to sit up from laying on your belly. The first couple times you did this, I went to get you from your nap and find you sitting up. So, I started watching you on the monitor once you began rustling. It was so cute to watch you roll onto your belly and start to peddle your hands backwards towards your body and slowly rise to a sitting position.
Within a week of learning to sit-up from your belly, you were crawling. The first time kind of just happened. You were on all fours and I was a few feet away and you just crawled over to me. There was no hesitation or really consideration into ‘how do I do this’ you just did it and haven’t looked back.
You LOVE LOVE LOVE to make a duck face. You push your top lip up to your nose and stick your bottom lip out, creating a little baby duck bill. And you do it all the time. You do it while you’re eating, crawling, playing with toys and riding in the stroller.
In addition to duck face, you are so expressive with your emotions. When you get really excited or something captures your attention and you want to share it with us, you raise your eyebrows and widen your big blue eyes and they sparkle like the sun reflecting on the ocean water. It is the definition of pure beauty and your eyes speaking the joy you’re experiencing. It is true bliss to watch this.
During the evenings, we play on the floor with your toys and you grab my sunglasses or my phone and I move them from one side of my body to another and this month is the first time I’ve noticed you following an item that isn’t in your sight. It is such a simple action that we take for granted every moment, but it is so darn exciting for me to watch your brain develop and make these connections.
Food
You continue to be terrific eater and have added many new items to your menu including: Cheerios, Gerber Puffs, grapes, watermelon, potatoes, cheese, frosted animal crackers and McDonald’s. I bought a McDonald’s hamburger for you and put the whole thing in front of you to see what you would do. Sure enough you picked the whole thing up and brought it to your mouth just like we do, which was hilarious because it is almost half the size of your head. On average you nurse/have bottles five times a day with each one being about six ounces, except for your morning feeding which is about eight ounces.
Sleep
You nap twice a day for about an hour and a half each time. Once around noon and the other time around 4:15. Both times you are put down awake. You usually cry and scuff around in your crib for five minutes and then fall asleep. Occasionally, you wake up between five and six am, eat and go right back to sleep, otherwise you usually wake up between 7:30 and 8:30 am. Each night, you go to bed around 9. About half the time you’ll fall asleep nursing and the other we’ll put you into your crib awake. One funny pattern we’ve noticed is you typically fall asleep in the bottom corner of your crib laying the short way (opposed to the long way). I’m not sure why, because you move around the whole crib before you ‘get comfortable’ but that is always the spot you end up.
Other notables:
You love pulling on my hair–especially now that I wear it down for work.
My necklaces have become the most fascinating toy and favorite teether for you.
You did absolutely fantastic on your first plane rides and slept most of the time on my chest, which I loved because you rarely cuddle in and sleep on us these days.
While in Vail, we attempted to take you to the top of the mountain, but the altitude got the best of you and put you in a lot of pain. The moment we stepped off the gondola, you were crying and they were screams of pain, not hunger or annoyance.
Your second bottom tooth popped through this month and you barely showed any symptoms of pain and agony. All of the sudden it was just there.
You are a climber. You climb up my body when I’m holding you, the back of the rocking chair, the couches and all over my legs when we’re playing on the floor.
As a result of Mom having Mastitis last month, you got thrush this month, which is a yeast infection inside your mouth. There were lots of little white patches on the insides of your cheeks, but cleared up quickly with a little medicine.
I think you’re going to love amusement park rides because you love swinging and bouncing, especially while I’m carrying you on my hip. We’ll be walking through the store and I’ll bounce you up and down a couple times and you grab tight onto my shirt throw your head back and giggle and wait for it to be done again.
While crawling, you like to hold onto items like socks, nail clipper, stuffed animals etc…You have stealth vision for unraveled carpet pieces. I have no idea how you find them, but you will spot them from across the room and B-line over to it and pop it into your mouth. By the end of the month you were also following traffic patterns when crawling. When you first started you would crawl in a straight line, even if it meant going under tables and chairs. Now, you’ll crawl around the dinning room table in the same way we walk around it. Again, I love watching you react to your brain development. It is so interesting.
In addition to many of the other changes taking place with you over the month, mom went back to work. Although the layoff was a little stressful, I LOVED the extra three months I was able to spend at home with you. I am so grateful to have had that extra time with you and loved the extra cuddles, smiles, walks, bonding and laughter. It was truly a gift and thanked God for it everyday.
I love you sweet girl! You make mama so happy!
Love,
Mama
Peanut Smiles 