Garrett - 8 Months

Diapers

Still in size 3’s.

Shoe Size

He doesn’t wear shoes yet so I have no idea!

Clothes

Mostly 6 months, but we are venturing into the 6-9 month range now.  I bought him some onesies and shorts from Wal-Mart the other day and they were 6-9 months.  They looked like they were going to be huge on him, and they are a little baggy, but not as big as I was thinking.  I have also washed all the 9 month clothes that Carter wore.  Most of them are very baggy, but some of them fit.

**This is my grandfather.  He is an amazing man and the rock of my dad’s side of the family.  We went to my cousin’s baseball game (my grandfather is his biggest fan and is at all of his games) because it was in Birmingham so both Garrett and Carter got some time with Paw Paw.  I will cherish the pictures I got of them together for a long time!**

Feeding/Solids

He is still eating 4 times a day and still doing only breastmilk (via nursing or bottle).  His solids are as follows:  cereal for breakfast, fruit for lunch (about 4oz), a bottle only at the 3rd feeding and veggies for dinner (another 4oz).  These solids are all in addition to the bottle or nursing.  Garrett is still in the distraction phase while he eats which is quite frustrating.  He’s always pulling at my hair or the straps on my shirt or trying to look around the room.   It was a phase with Carter so I’m hoping that this phase passes soon.

As far as solids goes, he’s pretty much eating it all.  Sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, green beans, bananas, peaches, pears, apples, prunes, etc.  We also started the combination foods like Bananas and Oranges or Apples and Cherries.  And he’s also eating the meat combinations like Chicken, Rice and Carrots.  I haven’t noticed a particular preference for one food over the other.  He seems to tolerate all the foods equally.  He used to not really like sweet potatoes but he really loves those now.  I’m about to start making combination foods for him (the ones I mentioned above that he’s eating is the store bought ones).  For example, grilled chicken with peas and brown rice.  He’s not near as messy of an eater as he used to be but he’s still messy because he’s always putting those two fingers in his mouth in between bites which causes the food to get on his face.  I don’t expect much less with an 8 month old though, to be honest.

Schedule

Still on the 4 hour schedule of feed, wake, sleep.   He’s now staying awake for about 2-2.5 hours each waketime.  He was at school this month for 3 days a week and he stayed awake for longer than 2.5 hours.  They said he did great though.  One of the teachers said he was the happiest baby in the class and that he never cries, he just whines a little bit when he’s bored with something.  He is just like Carter when it comes to sleeping in the nursery.  He’s doing good if he gets a 20 minute catnap, but for the most part, he wants to be awake and exploring.

I put this picture on Instagram one day.  Look at this comparison!!!  The picture on the left is Garrett at 3 months old and on the right is about 7.5 months.  My sweet boy is starting to slim down!!!

Sleep

Still sleeps like a champ!  About 12 hours every night, but naps changed this month because of school.  He normally gets two naps that are about 2 hours each and then a third nap that’s roughly an hour.  With school, he wasn’t sleeping much for that first nap (too much distraction) so when he came home he’d take a really long 2nd nap (almost 3 hours-and we would have to wake him up) and his third nap was still about an hour or so.  Next month we will probably go back to the old schedule of three naps a day, however at some point we are going to drop the 3rd nap.  That nap is typically dropped between 6-8 months and we tried to drop it once already and he wasn’t ready to lose the nap yet so we gave it back.  Kid likes to sleep…what can I say.

We went to the pool as a family one day and little man couldn’t even make it all the way home before falling asleep in my arms in the golf cart.

And this is my boy falling asleep at the highchair at school after lunch.  This is a first for me.  Carter has never fallen asleep in a random place like this.  It was HILARIOUS!

Waketime

Still loves doing the same things.  Watching Baby Einstein or the Baby First Channel on TV, playing in his exersaucer, playing on his music mat, etc.  Justin lowered our pack and play recently and now we set him in there with a bunch of toys and he’s pretty entertained for a while in there.  He’s still a champ at running errands but I’ve been trying to stay at home so that we can work on skills.  I feel horrible…I worked with Carter so much on hitting milestones like crawling and standing up and stuff like that, but I just haven’t been able to do it as much with Garrett as I did with Carter.  It may be why Carter was able to do stuff slightly quicker than Garrett has been able to.  Regardless, I’m currently using some waketimes to work on crawling and standing with Garrett.  Until the last few days, this kid showed ZERO interest in crawling.  He just now is beginning to test his own limits and see if he can get to an object further away than he wants it to be.  He isn’t doing much on all fours yet.  If he is able to get to the object it’s because he has used a combination of random maneuvers to get there.  But Carter did that too and the crawling on all fours wasn’t far behind so maybe Garrett will be up on all fours and crawling like a pro soon.  He does, however, show a ton of interest in standing and pulling up so he may do that before crawling.  It’s also not unusual for kids to skip crawling all together and go straight to walking. 

First time sitting up like a big boy in the shopping cart!

Mother’s Day Out

This month was Garrett’s time at school!!!  He went all four weeks of June from 9-1 three days a week.  I was soooooooo nervous y’all.  With Carter, his first day of school was no big thing for me.  He was also around Garrett’s age when he started, but I went back to work when Carter was 3 months old so by the time he was 8 months old, I was used to someone else caring for him other than me.  This wasn’t the case with Garrett because I have always been a stay at home mom with him.  It was much more stressful for me while he was in school, but that was also because it just so happen to be the week Justin and I went on our first vacation since Garrett was born.  We were in Puerto Rico the whole week of Garrett’s first week of school.  Luckily I have awesome grandmothers on my hands that always kept me up to date and some pretty awesome teachers that constantly sent me videos and pictures of both my kids.  Garrett looked so happy in all the pictures and got great reports from everyone.  He has done very well with school!  He was in the infant room with 5 other kids and he’s the youngest out of all of them, which let me tell you how weird that is given that he has an October birthday.  Carter’s consistently been the oldest in his classes because of his December birthday, so I knew Garrett would be even older with his October birthday, but somehow he’s one of the youngest in that infant room.  Crazy.  I adore hearing the teachers tell me that Garrett lights up when they take all the kids for gym time and Carter sees him and runs up to him to “tickle” him and give him hugs (Carter is in a different room than Garrett obviously, so he only sees his brother during gym time).  Garrett apparently loves seeing Carter and would smile and laugh so big. 

Kristi, Carter’s teacher, texted me this picture.  That’s Carter and another girl in his class rolling the ball back and forth to Garrett in the gym during play time. 

Statistics

No 8 month appointment (no appointment again until he’s 9 months actually).  As far as I can tell, he measures around 27.25 inches long (around 30-40th percentile) and weighs 18.8 lbs (roughly 40th percentile).  Slimming down for sure!

This is Garrett wearing one of his daddy’s old outfits when he was a kid.  I have several of Justin’s outfits, but Garrett hasn’t been able to wear them because of his size.  Now that he’s slimming up, he is finally able to fit in a couple.

Abilities

We’ve been working on crawling on all fours.  As of now, he is extremely capable of turning in circles on his belly.  I’ll put him on his tummy facing the TV and go get something from the kitchen and when I come back he’s facing the couch (he had done a complete 180).  I know he can get up on all fours because he’s done it numerous times, but I don’t think he’s connected the dots yet that if he could get up on all fours and crawl that way, that he’ll get further.  So basically he’s an army crawler right now (and even that is only a little bit of crawling), but not on all fours yet.  He’s also been “talking” a lot.  I swear he’s said the word “hey”, but I’m not 100% convinced that he’s saying it intentionally.  I’ve been saying “mama” and “dada” a ton trying to get him to say those and towards the end of the month he got SUPER clingy and wanted me all the time.  I swear I could hear him in the midst of his crying saying “mamamamama”.  I’m not counting it just yet because I don’t know if he is doing it intentionally but hopefully it will come soon!  He has shown a HUGE interest in standing up and pulling up.  He always wants to be standing.  He is capable of holding on to a table or toy and standing up on his own, but he can’t quite pull himself up to it yet, you have to place him there.  I can tell he’s trying though.  He may be standing before he’s crawling!

Oh and he’s also showing interest in sitting in his bouncy to watch Baby Einstein instead of laying back.  After a while, he ends up laying back, but when I buckle him in he always leans himself forward to sit up.  Carter did this too.

Teething

Well I was wrong on being a late teether-he got his first tooth while we were in Puerto Rico.  The bottom right central incisor.  Carter got his bottom two teeth at the same time but so far it’s looking like Garrett’s just getting the one side and maybe the other one will pop through soon.  Best baby ever for teethting!  Carter was a terror when his top incisors came in, but was relatively unaffected by the other teeth, even the molars.  We’ll see how Garrett does.

Discipline

The only form of discipline he gets is saying “no” to him.  And I think he understands too.  The only time I even say no to him is during mealtime when he eats solids.  He has a tendency to put his hands in his mouth (which makes feeding hard as you can imagine) or he puts the strap on the highchair in his mouth so I’m always saying “No” at those things.

Other Notable Things

Likes

• Sleeping
• When Carter “talks” to him in the car.  Carter will look at him and say “tickle tickle tickle tickle” and Garrett laughs hysterically at him.  He loves watching Carter while they’re both in the backseat.
• The cover of my phone.  It has a little band on it to put around my wrist and he’s constantly trying to put it in his mouth.
• Chewing on board books.  I’m ashamed to say that I barely read to him right now because every time I try to, he just grabs the book and puts it in his mouth.
• Eating his feet….have mercy he’s always got his feet in his mouth!
• When daddy plays peek-a-boo with him or makes him laugh in general
• Puffs.  We have begun introducing the “baby crack” to him.  At first he would grab a ton of pieces in his hand and not even manage to get one of them in his mouth.  He is getting significantly better at this now.  He still misses several pieces but he is getting so much more in his mouth than he used to.  The pincher grasp takes time for sure but I introduced it a little before I did with Carter.  Garrett is still using his whole hand but I’m hoping that soon he will begin using his thumb and index finger to pick things up.
• Still obsessed with sucking on his fingers – he prefers the index and middle finger of his right hand and as weird as this sounds, he prefers to suck them upside down.  He did begin experimenting with his thumb this month.  However the favorite is still the two fingers upside down.
• The toy that is connected to his crib.  It lights up and plays lullabies for a few minutes and then it turns itself off.  Now that Garrett is getting more and more mobile, he’s figured out that he can put his hand in between the crib rails and the toy and bang them together.  I think he likes the noise.  Gizmo, on the other hand, goes crazy because she can hear the noise but can’t see where it’s coming from.
• Baby Einstein Animal DVD
• When you kiss him on his neck.  It makes him belly laugh!

Dislikes

• This month, he highly dislikes being set down somewhere and watching me walk away.  This kid is all about the momma this month.
• Being kept awake for too long
• Getting bored with one activity-just like his brother did when he was this age, he likes to change up his activities every 15 minutes or so unless it’s a Baby Einstein DVD.  He can usually sit through a whole 25-30 minute DVD pretty easily.
• Getting scared when he’s not expecting it.  For example, Carter will sometimes run up to him really fast and “tickle” him.  If he’s not expecting it, this scares Garrett and he’ll cry.
• Teething