8 months – Peanut Smiles

Kate 8 Months

February 20, 2018March 21, 2019 peanutsmiles

Dear Kate,

In two weeks, we’re heading on an airplane to go visit your Grammy and Papa in Florida and I’m a little nervous about you. Although you are very stationary, you are a social little butterfly and have become less and less cuddly over time. You rarely fall asleep in my arms–even when I try and snuggle with you before bed. You prefer to be on your back in your dark room–none of which are going to happen on an airplane. We have a long day of travel and I’m praying you’ll snuggle and sleep on my chest on our flights. Also prayers that nobody gets sick!

I know you’re only 8 months old and there is a whole lot of life to live but the bond you have with your sister has exceeded any expectations that I could have ever imagined. You whole heartedly love Lexi to death. I’ll start to raise my voice at Lexi to knock it off and leave you alone cause I think she’s going to irritate you, only to start hearing you giggle hysterically. She honestly will just look at you and start to laugh. Your head is on a swivel looking for her. I’ve started going into your room and closing the door (opposed to sitting on the couch downstairs) to nurse you as you’re so distracted by her. I pray that you continue to be the peanut butter to her jelly because sisters are awesome.

Sleep

Your fairly regular sleep routine has been disrupted this past month with the two little teethers that have popped through. The first one came about two weeks ago and then the second one came over the past two days. Overall, you have done really well and are still our super happy Beatle, but I can tell they have caused you some pain. You’re waking at night 2-5 times and the ONLY thing that will calm you down is to nurse. I’ll try and rock you and put your blankie next to your face and sing you songs but you just scream and squirm around in my arms like a limp noodle. You’ve also been taking some amazing naps 3+ hours twice a day! We’ve been giving you some medicine to help with the pain and that has made a big difference. However, you haven’t spiked a fever and haven’t been nawing on everything like you had in the weeks leading up to this. The only ‘symptom’ I would say you had was watery eyes. You must have a clogged tear duct because you always have gunk floating around in your eyes and they get excessively watery while teething and get some build up around your eyes. Bedtime is still around 7:30 and includes changing diaper, putting jammies on nursing and then being put down in your crib. You’ll sleep until somewhere in the 4-6 range, nurse and then go back to sleep. You’re down to 2 naps a day and the length totally depends on if Lexi has school or not. If she does, your naps almost always get shortened as you have to go get her but if it is a non-school day, you’ll snooze for 1-2 hours.

Development

You started sitting up last month and have continued to strength those muscles and are now a master at it. You love to play with toys, banging things together, chewing on them and just touching and feeling the different textures and sizes of things.

You love love love bath time. Now that you’re sitting, you go in with your big brother and sister from time to time. We’ll put about enough water in the tub that half of your ears are covered when you lie down to rinse off the soap.

With the addition of table food and the amount that you’re eating, you’ve started to poop everyday. They are pretty hard and painful for you. We’ve started to put an ounce or two of apple juice into your bottles to give you some extra fiber and for the most part it seems to be working.

This month you’ve learned to take your pacifier in and out of your mouth very consistently and will find it while you’re sleeping and pop it back in. You were pretty reliant on the paci for the first 6 months or so, but now, we’ve started to take it away a little bit more often so it isn’t always in your mouth.

You have yet to roll over and show no signs of doing it anytime soon. You are just so content sitting I don’t think you think there is a reason to learn to do anything else.

Happy 8 months little Kate the Great! We love you to pieces.

Love,

Mama

Stats:

3-6 month clothes
size 3 diapers

William, William Monthly Updates

William 8 Months

October 25, 2015April 18, 2016 peanutsmiles

My little William,

You have mommy wrapped around your finger and give me this happy, tingly, squirming in my own skin-i’m going to burst feeling when you flash your huge smile at me every time we make eye contact. I just don’t know how to contain my love for you sometimes. You are the smiliest little guy ever. You smile at everyone all the time and twinkle your eyes while stealing everyone’s hearts.

You are all boy in every way little man. You have a very ‘boy’ look to you and are always on the go. I’m sure this statement will only be compounded by 10 in the next couple months as you become more mobile, but you are always wiggling in our arms, on the ground or bouncing in the jumparoo.

You have a strong affinity to me. You’ll be with daddy playing and doing just fine, but the moment you see or hear my voice, game over. You only want me and will start whining and following me around with your eyes until I come get you, to which you immediately stop whining. This month, you also learned to put your arms up when you want to be picked up. Most of the time I love it and don’t mind carrying you around on my hip while I do things in the house.

Your two little bottom chiclets are dared to not be the only little pearls in your mouth as you’ve been showing lots of teething signs. Your top two teeth are on the verge of cutting through. These two teeth have been a dosy and causing lots of pain. We can just see the pain in your eyes and it is heartbreaking to know there isn’t a whole lot we can do to help. You’ll wake several times in the night to nurse and won’t let me put you down without a full on cry fest when you’re in a lot of pain. Given the fact you only have two teeth, you love table food and by month end, pretty much refused baby food. Foods you’ve had include: banana, raspberry, blueberries, apples, pears, avocado, broccoli, graham crackers, rice, chicken, cheese, noodles, ice cream, cookies, cake, Kiks, cheerios, toast, english muffin, pizza, cream cheese, turkey, chicken wild rice soup, juice, pancakes and I’m sure many more I don’t remember. We have yet to find something you don’t enjoy. You can also successfully drink from a sippy cup and a straw, and prefer the sippys with straws.

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With your strong affinity to food, you’re still nursing like a champ. Usually, you nurse when you wake up around 6:30ish, again at 10, 1:30, sometime around 5:00ish and then right before bed. I quit pumping in the mornings this month and it really helped with my sanity. I can get an extra 30 min of sleep every morning and it has re-energized my mentality to nurse longer than what I was thinking. Now that you don’t need to eat on the 3 hour mark every day, it is much easier to plan my days with meetings and still make it work to come down and nurse. I’m usually down 2-3 times a day and LOVE having an excuse to come and snuggle with your everyday and am just not ready to give it up yet.

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You love to cross your legs while your sitting and playing, in your carseat or in the bathtub etc… I think the funniest thing about it is, your legs aren’t very long so to always have them crossed just looks silly.

I think you might be my water-baby. So far, you love the bath. As soon as I turn on the water, you start squirming to get out of my arms and into the water. You love to splash with your hands and feet and are very comfortable laying on your back while I wash your hair. You also loved the hot tub at Grandma and Papa’s house. They put you in your life jacket and you relaxed your head back onto the little pillow and just floated around like a little duck.

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Sleep is a questionable topic for you little bud. With the exception of teething and being sick, you’re a great night time sleeper and are sleeping through the night from between 7:00-8:00 pm to about 6:30ish am. Naps are another topic and there isn’t any kind of consistency. On daycare days, you almost always sleep in my arms after your nurse for about 25 min. The moment I stand up, you wake up. Occasionally, you’ll take another nap in the crib but it usually don’t last more than 20 min. At home your morning nap will range anywhere from 15 min to an hour and a half, which usually is around 10:00. Your afternoon nap is around 2:00ish and will last anywhere from 30 min to 2 hours. There really is no rhyme or reason for how long it is. Overall, you are just a really light sleeper. If someone sneezes, you’ll wake up, and that has been the case sine your very first days. You’ll fall asleep in the car, but I think there have been less than 5 times, where we’ve been able to transfer you into the house and keep you sleeping. I’m hoping this will change as you get older. With that said, you do a pretty good job falling asleep when we put you down awake. About half the time you just roll over and go to sleep without a peep and the other half, you’ll cry for 5-10 minutes and then fall asleep. You’re mostly sleeping on your stomach or side these days. I’ve started to notice that you’ll sleep better and longer if you are on your tummy and try to position you to roll that way if I put you down after nursing. When you do wake up, you start crying right away to get us to come get you. Occasionally, you’ll chat a little. Either way, the moment I walk into your room you start kicking your legs and waving your hands in excitement to see me. It is the best!

This month, you’ve made major progress in the mobility department. You willingly spend a significant amount of time on your tummy and have become a master spinner and roller. You reach for toys has really expanded, especially while you’re sitting. You lean over so you’re almost on all fours, but haven’t figured out how to move your foot behind you to actually get on all fours. Sometimes, gravity gets the best of you and take a little nose dive, but are usually Ok.

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By the end of the month, you officially started army crawling to get things–mostly to me. I usually get super excited and start clapping and saying ‘Yeah William’ and keep scooting myself backwards to force you to go longer distances, which royally pisses you off. Sorry bud.

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Overall, you don’t seem too interested in crawling, but do want to try and pull yourself up on anything and everything. You do pretty good, but need to keep building up your arm strength and learning how to get your foot out from under you leg. You can usually pull yourself onto your knees but then get stuck. You can successfully pull yourself up when you’re in the bathtub. It is just the right hight that you’re able to get your forearms on the ledge and then pull yourself the rest of the way up, and that is all you want to do in there. It’s also probably one of the most dangerous places to practice, but you seem to have no fear of anything at this point. You have fallen down a couple times head under water in all. I grabbed you right away, but you didn’t seem to mind. Shook your head a little and that was it. (Big Sister would have had a big tearful melt down, even at almost 3) When you do pull yourself up, you are so darn proud of yourself. You have the biggest grin and just start giggling. If you’re giggles could be translated, I swear you’d be saying ‘Look what I did, Look what I did!!!’

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Another favorite milestone this month was learning how to give kisses. When I kiss your checks, you open your mouth and turn your face to me. It is a little gross as my lips are pretty much inside of your mouth but you make this sweet little noise and my heart melts when you randomly grab my face and initiate a kiss. Small body but big heart in there my little William. You’re also a pretty snuggly little guy. You love to nuzzle your face into me or rest your head on the crook of my shoulder. Whenever this happens, I feel like life kind of stops. No matter what I’m doing or where I need to be going, I just stop and hold your warm little body next to mine and just try and soak up your warmth and love because I just know it won’t last forever and really, there isn’t anything more important to me than enjoying these sweet moments with you.

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I’m pretty sure you can clap too. I’ve only seen it once or twice and wonder, are you trying to sign ‘more’ but I’m pretty sure you are clapping. When we play patty-cake, you are able to open your hands all the way (most babies keep their hands in a fist) and clap. More to come on this next month.

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Noteables:

You wear a size 3 diapers and 6-9 and 9-12 month clothes.
You pretty much always have a runny nose. I used to look at other kids and see the snot or the dried crusties around their nose and think ‘how come parents don’t wipe that off?’ But no more judgement here. I get it. Sigh. You can’t, it is always there. You wipe it off and then next minute, it is there again. It’s not even that they are necessarily sick, it is just always there. And the annoyance you have of me chasing you around with a Kleenex all the time just isn’t worth it.
One final major milestone this month was spending your first night away from Mom and Dad. You spent the night and Grandma and Papa’s and did great. You made it all the way through the night and were a sweet cuddle bug with Grandma.

We love you so much little bud.

Love,

Mama

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Alexis Monthly Posts, Lexi

Lexi Eight Months

August 4, 2013September 29, 2013 peanutsmiles

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