Isaac's 8th Month
Isaac continues to eat more and more foods and quantities (in addition to the foods from last month he's now had black and pinto beans, peas, pears, cheese, chex cereal as I was making Chex Mix!, yogurt, chicken and carrots). He has started using his fingers to pinch Cheerio's, as opposed to the raking motion. He's also much more coordinated in feeding himself than he used to be. It's fun to watch how quickly he progresses. We've tried putting small bites of food on his tray for him to self-feed, but he just looks at it and squawks at it/you until you feed it to him! It's funny to me, since already by this age Kayla refused to be fed with a spoon. How different their personalities are! We are feeding him dinner every day, and try to get in at least 1 other meal sometime (either b-fast or lunch). I actually really hate this transition time from solely nursing to solely eating foods. I struggle with how much to feed him, how often, etc. I know it should be easy, since I'm already feeding Kayla 3 meals plus snacks, so you would think that I would also easily transition him into this as well. But I'm not! I've gotten used to being able to eat b-fast myself, empty the dishwasher, pack Kayla's lunch for preschool, etc. while she eats. To suddenly have to spoon feed him during that time is a rough adjustment!! And he often is napping during lunch time, so I haven’t figured out how to make that work yet. Work in progress I guess. I struggled with this transition with Kayla too, and she turned out to be a great eater, so I guess I shouldn't worry!
He's now more or less stable while sitting. I'll leave him sitting and am free to go into the other room. Although whenever I sit him up I make sure there isn't anything hard by his head that he would hit should he fall when I am gone.
He can army crawl and slowly move from one side of the room to the other. He hasn't ever ventured out of the room to follow me, but I'm sure I'm not too far from that. If we put him up on all 4's he will rock back and forth until he lunges himself on his belly and then will army crawl!
He can push himself half way into a sitting position, but needs help to get all the way up. If we hold him by his fingers, he happily will walk. But he's nowhere near sturdy enough to stand on his own yet!
His sleep continues to be hit or miss.... on a rare occasion he will sleep through the night, but most typically he is up once. Actually, he is usually up once in my night of sleep, but he usually wakes up to eat between 10-11, so I guess it's up 2x in his night of sleep. He is eating once in the early AM (somewhere 2-5, quite the range) and then again at give or take 9, 1, 5 and then 10. Ideally he will start more consistently sleeping through the night, and we can adjust the feedings to more of an 8,12,4,8 thing. He is going to bed around 8, and he just isn't hungry at that time, so I don't feed him... but then he'll wake up after just a few hours to eat. So, I'm trying to figure out what I can do to try to change his routine... or just be patient until he adjusts to that himself. He continues to love sleeping with something over his head, in the picture below it’s his lovey (you'll probably need to click to enlarge to see it)!
He loves wheels. He seems fascinated by them! He loves books, and I mention last month that I was going to put forth extra effort to read him baby books, and I can say that I did follow through with that! But it is near impossible to read them to him! He just wants to put it in his mouth! So very badly! He'll grab at the pages and flip them and then just grabs the whole book and tries to shove it in his mouth!! On the rare occasion that he lets me turn a page or two, he sure does love to look at the pictures and in touch-and-feel books he (sometimes) likes to touch them. But mostly he wants to eat them :)
I was pretty excited that Isaac fit into the same Thanksgiving shirt that Kayla did. Kayla was 3.5 months at Thanksgiving, and the 6 month shirt was a bit big on her. Isaac was 8 months, and the shirt was a little short in the arms, but it still fit! At 6 months their stats were quite similar, I’ll be interested to see how they are next time I get him checked! Below Kayla is on the left and Isaac on the right.
I am totally loving my little man and really enjoying watching him grow and develop. We know we are truly blessed to have the privilege to raise him.