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