William: Eight Months!

Sitting still is not in this kid's vocabulary. And doesn't he make the goofiest faces?!?

Check out his hair! William thought it would be fun to roll around on the blanket, which caused some major static electricity. I'm not sure he realized what Mom and Dad found so funny, but that's okay :)

So as I was looking through my notes about William's eighth month of life, I had to laugh at the first thing I had written down: Major teething pains. Super clingy, doesn't even want solid foods that he previously liked, not sleeping well, extra fussy. Well, I'm here to tell you, that by the time William officially turned eight months old, he still had no teeth. And those symptoms? Pretty much never let up. Now, I know that teething pains can start well before the teeth even start to show, but uffda. Things have been a little rough.

Thankfully, there have been plenty of good things going on as well. Because he was starting to refuse all foods, we decided to start giving him some finger foods to see how he did with those. And so far, he's doing great! We've tried banana, sweet potato, avocado, pear, bread (even a pancake!), and plum. He still misses his mouth about 30% of the time and struggles a little bit grabbing some of the slimier food items off his tray, but overall it's been a major success. As far as purees go, we've introduced rice cereal, carrot, acorn squash, peach, green beans, and asparagus. Overall, those have gone pretty well too, although I'm convinced he gobble up some of his lesser favorites (like asparagus) in a heartbeat if we gave them to him as finger foods instead of purees.

Despite the dropping temperatures and incessant cold/flu bugs that are going around, William has managed to remain healthy enough to avoid any visits to the doctor, which means no height/weight stats. Although based on our home scale we're pretty sure William is pushing nineteen pounds. Save for a few random discrepancies in the sizing he's pretty consistently in 6-9 month clothing, although some 3-6 month items still fit as well as some 12 month items. And he's still more than comfortable in size three diapers (knock on wood, it's been awhile since we've had a blowout!)

Developmentally, we can tell that he's working on finding his voice and figuring out how it works, but he's still not much of a talker. I think part of the reason he's been so slow on talking is that he is focusing all his energy elsewhere--mainly, becoming an independent mover. He isn't taking steps on his own yet, but he will stand unassisted for a few seconds, and he's just recently starting pulling himself into a seated position from his stomach (which--we discovered--required a whole new round of baby proofing because he can pull himself up onto a lot more things from a seated position than he could from his stomach). A fun skill he's picked up is the ability to take his shirts off, especially if we pull his arms out for him. Of course, this is not such a cute skill for him to practice while I'm trying to get him dressed, but it's still pretty cute (although it probably won't be as cute this summer when we can't get him to keep a shirt on. Oh well.)

As I alluded to with the "teething" issue, sleep is still inconsistent at best. On good nights, he'll go down between 730 and 800, stir a few times after that and need us to go calm him back down, nurse at 1030/1100, nurse again around 200, and then at 530 (almost on the dot) he'll wake up--still tired, but he won't go back in his crib so one of us will have to sit with him in the recliner until 730 or so when he gets up for the day. Sometimes he drops that 200 feeding, which is wonderful, and other nights he is up even more than that. It's exhausting, to say the least. And while Darrell and I realize that we've definitely created some sleep crutches for him and some of the issues are our own fault, we continue to come up with excuses (he's teething, we're going on vacation, he's got a cold, etc) to avoid doing any "harsh" sleep training method. Naps, however, have been improving slightly; I'm usually able to get at least one nap of just over an hour in his crib, so that's been nice.

Overall, we are still loving this whole parenting gig and each month continues to be more fun than the last as more and more of William's personality starts to come out (the stubbornness... Not quite as fun. But he comes by it honestly, so we really can't be surprised).