Eight Month Photo Shoot

Wow it was much harder to take your birthday photos this month! Little man, you are ON THE MOVE. You just don't sit still and mug for the camera like you used to ;)

Oh well I'm pretty sure I still got some great shots... you're the cutest little model around!!! Love you so much my sweet boy.

The first photo is being entered in The Paper Mama's black and white photo challenge.

Que Pasa Calabasa? 8 Months

WOW, what a month! You have changed an unbelievable amount in the past 30 days. Tonight you see Daddy again for the first time in a month and I'm not even sure he will recognize you! It's like you are morphing into a little boy overnight. Well, without further adieu, let's see what you've been up to...

• crawling - yup, you are officially mobile. Your first official crawl steps were taken on July 4th. Starting 2 weeks before that you kind of rolled, wriggled, and army-crawled to wherever you wanted to go (usually towards power cords and electrical outlets - yay!).
• pulling up - you can pull up to stand on my legs, the tv console (eek!), and a cube thingy that holds your blankets.
• standing - you can stand up on your own while holding on to various pieces of furniture or various parts of my body.
• talking - you babble like crazy!
• singing - when people sing to you, you join right in with your sweet soprano.
• dancing - at Auntie Nikki's wedding you were a dancing fool! You were dancing with Auntie Diane and your legs were kicking and your arms were waving in time to the music!
• waving - you have learned how to wave hello and goodbye! it is sooooo sweet!
• being curious george - you see everything and want to touch everything. at night I keep my cellphone between the pillows and every morning when you wake up, you roll over and crawl to the pillows, push them aside, and grab my phone to eat it!
• making all kinds of funny noises - you cluck your tongue, blow raspberries and bubbles, make popping sounds with your lips, and snort when you both laugh and cry.
• playing - you still love your exersaucer and jolly jumper. you love your blocks, balls, and trucks. you love to play peekaboo and bouncing on our knees and in our arms. you love to splash in the bath and swim in the pool. you love playing on the floor with Oma and Grandpa and reading books. and you always laugh after you sneeze!
• walking - you still love it when we hold your hands so you can walk around. now, you are walking places with a purpose, you know exactly where you want to go!
• teething - you still don't have any teeth (thank God), but your gums are pretty white and bumpy!
• eating - you've tried a lot of different foods now. you're still not too sure about having food in your mouth though! we're doing baby-led solids and skipping the spoon-feeding of purees, so you're still mostly eating only breast milk as of yet. however, you've eaten cheerios (and you've mastered the pincer grasp in about 5 minutes!), baby mum-mums, toast, bread, pasta, meatballs, ground beef, chicken, broccoli (well, actually, you just look at broccoli and scream lol), peas, sweet potato, melon, watermelon, banana (whoa that gave you crippling gas pains!), oatmeal, strawberries, butternut squash, and steak.
• sleeping and napping - ok this has been an AMAZING change. it all started the weekend we arrived back in Toronto from Mexico. I pumped some breastmilk and left you with Oma and Auntie Diane for a few hours while I went to get my haircut from Zia Melissa. Well, YOU REFUSED TO DRINK MY MILK FROM A BOTTLE. In fact, you still refuse it, but that's a whole other stressful story. Anyways, since you were crying inconsolably, they tried laying you down in your playpen and magically, you fell asleep after crying-it-out for 6 minutes. I was TOTALLY opposed to CIO, which is why you always napped ON me, but after hearing this I wondered if there might actually be something to this method. In any case, due to my starting school in September, you NEEDED to be able to sleep on your own. Now, I've read a lot about babies and sleeping. I've read The No Cry Sleep Solution. I know your personality, and I know that the NCSS would not work for you. Any attention just causes you to get more upset and cry harder. So I reluctantly decided to try CIO. The first time, at Auntie Diane's house, I cried right along with you. But, you did fall asleep, after about 10 minutes. You still cry a bit when I lay you down, but it's usually for less than a minute and never more than 5. The length of your naps have been increasing too, from about 45 minutes to over an hour, sometimes even 2 hours or more!

Well my sweet boy, I am one proud Mama. I love you more than anything and I'm enjoying every minute watching you grow up. Everyone who meets you falls in love with you. Several people have said to me that you are the cutest baby they've ever seen, including their own children!! I vehemently agree. XOXO

Happy 8 Month Birthday Mi Corazon!

I think it's safe to say you don't like broccoli.

Viva Mexico!

Here are some photos from our trip to Santa Ana Xalmimilulco, Mexico, to visit your papa's family. We were there from May 11 to June 9, 2011. I'll have to add the pictures from my iPhone later. We had a great time with everyone, especially your cousins Miriam and Andrecito. They could always make you laugh!!!

Here is some of the scenery near Tia Maria and Tio Andres' house. There were alot of horses, cows, sheeps, and dogs around there, and a pretty babbling brook right beside the road. They had a really great view of the two volcanos surrounding the town.

You always had a great time playing with your cousins. We saw them every day!

There were some beautiful skies there, there were many sudden thundershowers, especially at night, and the sky looked amazing before and after!

For some reason, I had the easiest time speaking Spanish with your cousing Miriam. She was a great teacher ;)

There were beautiful sunsets almost every day!

Tia Maria loved to hold you. She would take you down the street to the store and show you off!

I was just trying to take a picture with good 'bokeh', with the tree in focus and everything in the background blurry. Meh.

They tried to teach you how to ride Andrecito's bike but... I think you were a bit yound for that yet ;)!

On the morning of your baptism (June 4, 2011), your padrino and madrina dressed you up in your baptism outfit. You looked like a little pope, you were so so so adorable!

You were the best behaved baby in the whole church (mostly because I fed you and you fell asleep)!

Your primo Andrecito got baptized as well. Mama and papa were his padrino and madrina.

The ceremony was a bit crazy. There were probably about 10 babies and kids getting baptized on the same day, and after the mass, everybody kind of bum-rushed the priest and crowded around him like in a mosh pit. Mama didn't understand what the heck was going on and it honestly was over before I even knew it. I barely saw it because it happened so fast and I was still trying to press through the throng of people surrounding the baptismal font. Manuela and Tino took some pretty good pictures and video though!

I love this picture of your primo!

After the ceremony, we had a HUGE party at papa's house. So many of his family members helped out preparing all the food for everyone. Your papa bought three sheep, and his uncles (who are butchers) killed and prepared them for us. We cooked them in big barrels for almost a whole day! We had a DJ playing (blasting) salsa, cumbia, durangense, and ranchero music and after dinner everyone was dancing! It was a super fun time and everyone enjoyed themselves. Papa enjoyed himself a bit too much, with tequila ha ha! He was so proud of you and happy, that he was doing shots with everyone to celebrate.

Well my sweet boy, you spent your 6th month of life in Mexico, and all in all, I think we enjoyed it there. The people were all obsessed with you. Strangers in the street would stop just to admire your pretty eyes and everyone we passed would make some kind of comment about you! I was one proud Mama that's for sure. It was sad to leave, but we will be back every summer to visit!