Carter - Eight Months

Diapers

Literally just started wearing 3’s a week ago. 

Clothes

We are finally wearing 6 month clothes (though most of his shorts are still 3 months)!  I’ve even packed up all his 3 month stuff (minus the shorts mentioned above) and have gotten it ready to give to Tiffany, one of my best friends who had a baby boy in May.  He’s been “lending” all of his clothes, one stage at a time, to Harper Lobdell.  And can I just talk for a second about how much I love my baby’s fat??  I mean, he’s now in the 25th percentile in weight (see below) but he somehow manages to have the CHUNKIEST thighs, knees and feet.  I often talk about how  much I love his “knee fat”.  And the dimples in his thighs…LOVE IT!

Nursing

Well, I finally did it.  I said bye bye to nursing.  Literally this past weekend…and I am pretty sure my  milk is still in the process of drying up.  I made it 8 months folks.  I’m proud of that!  My original goal was only 6 months and I made that.  My second goal was 1 year and even though I wish I could have made it that long, I just couldn’t handle pumping at work anymore.  It was a HUGE inconvenience.  Mainly when I was working out at client offices and had to go to the bathroom multiple times a day and sit on a toilet for 15 minutes.  It’s just not feasible.  I truly feel that if I were a stay at home mom, I would have continued breastfeeding.  Carter and I never had any issues with it at all and I thoroughly enjoyed nursing him, however since I worked, I only got to nurse him once a day (twice when he was younger).

Solids

Carter is now on Stage 2 solid foods.  This means that instead of the 2 1/2 oz. of food that comes with Stage 1 foods, he now gets 3 1/2 oz. of food.  There are also so many more options of food with Stage 2.  New ones we’ve added are Hawaiian Mangos, Mixed Berries, Garden Vegetables, Turkey and Rice, Macaroni and Cheese, Sweet Potatoes and Corn, I could go on forever.  I’ve noticed that Stage 2 is a lot of combinations of two different foods and Carter LOVES that.

Sleep

Most of the month, Justin was in town, so Carter has gotten used to waking up late since daddy goes in to work late.  Many times, Justin has had to wake Carter up at 9am, but mostly, the past couple of months Carter has been waking up between 8:15-8:45am.  Justin has now kicked up his traveling again and unfortunately for Carter, that means he has to wake up at 7:30am again so that I can take him to my mother-in-law’s house before I go to work. 

Also, on the sleep front, since Carter started being able to pull up on the bumpers in his crib, we’ve stopped using sleep sacks at night because I’m afraid that he’ll trip over the material and fall.  He now just sleeps in footie pajamas at night.  For the time being, we still use the sleep sacks during naptime because he’s not in the crib unattended like he is at night.  We are always looking at the monitor during the day but at night we’re asleep and if he woke up and tripped and hit his head I would never forgive myself!  We also lowered the crib as low as it can go now that he can pull up.  And this morning, on his 8 month birthday, I came into his room to get him up for the day and the kid was standing up in his crib.  STANDING UP.

Overall, he still sleeps around 11-12 hours at night.  Usually he’s in bed by 7:30ish, but lately we’ve been pushing it back to around 8pm.  We’ve noticed that sometimes when we put him down later, he wakes up later (this is helpful on days that he goes to MDO - if he wakes up later, he’s happier longer at MDO).  However this isn’t always the case.  There’s several days that I’ve put him down around 8pm and he still wakes up around 7:15/7:30.  I’m going to experiment with it some more in his 9th month and see if I can find a pattern.  Naps are about 1 1/2 hours a piece (he takes two a day), but can sometimes be 2 1/2 hours long depending on how tired he is.

Waketime

No major changes to the waketimes this month. His favorite things to do during waketime are still watching Baby Einstein DVD’s and taking strolls around the neighborhood or just sitting outside.  Now that he crawls a lot, you can usually put him on the floor in our living room and he’ll crawl around and play with toys on his own for up to an hour before he gets fussy and wants to do something else.  But also, now that he can crawl around like crazy, he doesn’t like watching the Baby Einstein in the bouncy seat anymore.  He prefers to just sit in the floor like a big boy!  See for yourself:

Mother’s Day Out

Carter started going to MDO at our church this month.  His first day was August 23rd but Justin and I went to a “meet and greet” with the teachers on the 21st.  He did well on his first day.  You can read more about it here.  I was so worried about the nap he’d take at MDO.  I honestly wasn’t expecting him to take one because he’s not used to sleeping with other people in the room with him.  Shockingly, he did sleep, but it was only for 30 minutes.  I’m still impressed though.  I’m sure that as he gets used to MDO, he’ll learn to sleep through anything!

Statistics

Carter didn’t have an 8 month appointment.  He won’t have another doctor appointment until he’s 9 months old.  At 8 months, Carter weighs 18.3 pounds, which puts him in the 25th percentile. He is around 27.5 inches long (extremely hard to measure a squirmy baby) which puts him around the 50th percentile for height.

Abilities

Oh my oh my.  As soon as Carter turned 7 months old, it was like he turned on the developmental ability switch.  Here’s what he can do now and this is the order in which he did everything:

• Sit up from a laying down position
• Army crawls from one end of the room to the other (see video of this here)
• Pulls up on the bumpers on the crib to his knees
• Clapped for the first time on August 6th - but unfortunately hasn’t done it since then
• After learning to army crawl and mastering that skill, he started crawling on all fours on August 14th.  The first time he did it was when dad was in the shower and I had Carter playing in the bathroom while I was getting ready for work.  Gizmo came in the bathroom and sat down and Carter crawled to her.  Man….my kid is in love with that dog.  Just like his daddy.
• He can also push up from a sitting position to where he’s standing while bending over.  I know that’s hard to imagine based on the way I worded it.  This is better:

• In this “baby downward dog” as I like to call it, he is now taking steps.  Oh yes.  Steps.  He’ll put his hands on the ground and stand up like he is in the picture above (with his hands still on the ground) and he’ll take up to 3 steps like that.  I think he gets this from watching Gizmo walk on four legs.  Regardless, mark my words-this kid will be walking before he’s one year old!
• Stand up while holding onto something (the crib, the side of the bathtub, the couch, etc.)

Carter’s overall mood was rough towards the middle of his 8th month.  I’ve read that once they start learning new things, this can affect their mood.  It’s like sensory overload to them.  He had the same thing happen to him during week 27 of his life.  He was extremely fussy for a week and then all of a sudden, he was able to get on all fours and rock back and forth.  So I imagine that his fussiness in the middle of this month had to do with the huge list of abilities above that he started doing.  Of course, it could be teething related (see below-though I really don’t think he’s teething).  Also, I was starting to get afraid that Carter is slightly “shy” and doesn’t like big crowds of people or when people he doesn’t know get in his face because he started getting fussy when people he didn’t know were holding him. But he hasn’t gotten like that the past week or so and he met a bunch of new people at MDO, so I really think the fussiness was because of all the new stuff he learned.  Parenting side note - I think this is the WORST part about parenting so far.  Not knowing what’s wrong because they can’t talk.  I can fix it if I just knew what was wrong!!!  Regardless, he was much better by the end of this month and wasn’t near as fussy.

Teeth

No new teeth yet.  Still only has the bottom two central incisors.  I was thinking he’d get his top incisors by now, but no such luck.  Like I mentioned above, towards the middle of the eighth month, Carter started getting really fussy.  He was constantly drooling, hands in the mouth all the time (though I don’t know that I can blame teething on that because that kid ALWAYS has his hands in his mouth), he started waking up earlier each morning than usual and his overall mood just significantly decreased.  Carter never showed signs of teething when he got the first two teeth so between that and the fact that I don’t see any visible signs of teething (nor do I feel anything in his mouth), I was hesitant to say he’s teething.  But I don’t really know what else would cause these symptoms other than teething. 

Likes

• Thunderstorms!!  Carter’s best sleep happens when Thor is knocking on his window!  It’s so weird.  There was a really bad series of thunderstorms in Birmingham right after he turned 7 months old and it was LOUD and CONSTANT thunder and lightning.  It lasted from about 1am all the way to 8am.  And little man didn’t budge all night.  I was shocked.  But that wasn’t the only time he’s done it.  He’s slept through several thunderstorms in his short little lifetime.
• Crawling anywhere and everywhere and the past couple of days, he frequently crawls towards me.  If I leave a room, he follows me.  I love it.
• TV remotes and cell phones.  He’ll play with the “toy” phones and remotes you can buy at a baby store, but he can TOTALLY tell the difference.  He prefers the real thing.  He also really likes to watch his Baby Einstein on one of our I-Pads.  Carter may be just as “techy” as his dad.  My in-laws were joking around the other day saying that Carter would be the first ever baby to bring his I-Pad to Mother’s Day Out!!
• Still loving golf cart rides and he now likes to grab the steering wheel.  And we’ve also started walking/jogging in the BOB jogging stroller (the most expensive stroller on the market that I managed to get for $8 at a church garage sale - SCORE!).
• Being outside in general.  I’ve started putting a blanket in the grass in the front or backyard and letting him sit out there and play with toys (supervised of course)
• Loves Gizmo more and more every day.  She’s the first thing he looks for when he gets up from a nap or nighttime sleep
• Pulling up in the crib.  He tries so hard, but we’ve made it a little harder on him by lowering the crib mattress to the lowest level
• Being thrown in the air
• Peek-A-Boo
• Puffs….oooooohhhhh do we love puffs.  It calms a fussy baby QUICK.
• Balloons - something we discovered while at the twins’ birthday party this month.  Not so much a fan of when they pop right next to his face though.
• Standing up on the music mat.  It has become his FAVORITE floor toy all of a sudden.
• The lion that is attached to his carseat that makes noise.  He’s always played with this but for some reason in the past month, he is obsessed with it.  We have two of them and the second one is upstairs in his room on the changing table and he plays with it while we change his diaper (it’s the only thing that will keep him still during the process).

Dislikes

• He used to really hate being strapped in the carseat, but I haven’t seen him cry while we do this in a LONG time.  He just plays with his little lion that is attached to the carseat while we strap him in. 
• He also used to despise the period between bathtime and bedtime where we’d change his diaper and put PJ’s on.  He doesn’t really hate it anymore.  On a rare occasion, he’ll still cry, but for the most part, he just stares at Gizmo while I’m changing him or start sucking his thumb.  Also, during this particular diaper change is when he feels the need to crawl.  I’ll take the towel from the bath off of him and that’s his cue to roll over onto all fours and crawl to the dog or remote or anything within reach to play with.  I keep having to pull him back to put his diaper and PJ’s on and that’s when he cries.
• Getting bored if he’s been doing one activity for too long.
• Apparently he doesn’t like having pictures taken.  We went to my sister’s studio on August 4th to have his 7 month pictures taken.  She got some great shots, but Carter was F-U-S-S-Y!!!!  He was totally content when you picked him up, but when he was put down to take pictures, he wailed.  As if he doesn’t get enough traits from his daddy, hatred of professional picture taking may be another one to add to the list.