Matthew: Eight Months!

Yes, his tongue is out. Again

Height/Weight: Nothing official (which means no doctor's visits--yay!) but I feel like he's longer than his brothers. Not necessarily heavier, but he's definitely no bean pole. I'm very curious to see what his stats are next month at his well visit (we got the first round of his flu shot at Connor's well visit a few weeks ago and I was secretly hoping they'd take his height and weight there, but no such luck).

Wearing: Still rocking the size three diapers. I've started buying some size four diapers, but I'm sure as heck finishing off all the size three diapers (however many there are) before I make the switch. He's fully in 6-9 month clothing, although for one-piece items (like rompers and some pajamas) I've needed to move up to 12 month items so they aren't too short.

Eating: Plenty of solid food, plenty of Mama's milk. He still nurses five times a day (morning, after each of his three naps, and before bed), and about 70% of the time he nurses once at night, but rarely--if ever--more than that. He's also eating three meals a day of solid food, and pretty well loving every minute of it. We're pretty much only doing single-food purees (with the introduction of a new food every four days), and honestly, he doesn't get a ton of variety beyond the new food because we haven't done a very good job of keeping his puree options well-stocked. However, he is loving finger foods, so we've been giving him some of the vegetable sides that we're eating (like sweet potatoes and green beans), and those are generally seasoned, so he's at least getting a little more variety that way. 

Sleeping: Another month, and no major sleep complaints. Something just doesn't feel right... I can only assume I'll have it coming for me when this kid is a toddler. We're into a pretty solid three-nap routine, and he has started to stretch the afternoon nap out a little longer (even a few days where he's matched Connor's two hour nap!), so that's been nice. We had a glimpse one day of what a two-nap day might look like, and honestly, it wasn't pretty. I'm trying not to stress out about it too much and just enjoy the "comfortable" routine we have now, but honestly, I have no idea how we'll make a two-nap day work with school pick up at 2:45. Maybe we'll just go from three naps to one nap?!? That's doable, right?!? Night time has been pretty good as well; as I mentioned earlier he still gets up to nurse the majority of the time, but he goes back to bed really easily (even after a diaper change). He occasionally wakes up around 5AM, which is not acceptable behavior in this house, but if one of us sits with him he'll usually sleep until his normal 6:45-7:15 wake up time. 

New Stuff: Well, it didn't take long for him to get from army crawling to hands and knees crawling--and he was equally quick to figure out how to get to a seated position from a crawling position. His brothers aren't exactly loving his mobility and ability to get in to anything and everything, but they are equally his biggest cheerleaders. The first few days he started hands and knees crawling they all got so excited every time he did it and gave him the biggest cheers. He is also pulling himself up on EVERYTHING, so we've had to reevaluate which of our "bigger" toys can be left out because some of them are a bit of a toppling risk when he tries to pull himself up. And--for what I am pretty sure is the first time--we actually got his crib mattress lowered BEFORE he started pulling himself up in his crib! I think with the other boys it always took an "oh crap" moment where we saw them standing in the crib (and in major risk of leaning too far forward and toppling out) before we remembered to lower it (and I know for at least one boy that moment happened around 9:00 at night). The biggest downside to his obsession with pulling himself up, though, is that he can't sit himself back down yet. Not a huge issue during the day, but in his crib, well, that's a different story. I'm convinced he would sleep through the night more often if he could get back down on his own--plus when he's tired in his crib he has a hard time laying back down from a seated position, so he'll get "stuck" that way too. Honestly, though, it isn't a major enough of an issue that I'd even consider it a complaint; it's just the reality of the phase that we're going through, and after raising three boys through this stage I can finally recognize that without stressing over the negative (and mostly minor) impacts this phase has on my life. 

A few other, smaller, new things: in mid-September, Matthew got to join us on Connor's birthday outing (a special Mom-Dad-Birthday Boy date), and Connor chose an indoor swimming pool for his outing, which I think Matthew might have loved just as much as Connor did. The pool has a warm water area, which also happens to be zero-entry, so Matthew could just sit and splash and crawl around in ankle deep water and he was in heaven. Additionally, he has tolerated the first month of having TWO big brothers in school pretty well and doesn't usually fuss terribly about pick ups and drop offs (although right now we're still parking and getting out; we'll see if his tolerance changes when he has to sit idly in the car once we start doing the pick up line this winter). He took his first family trip to the Apple Orchard, which ended up being terribly anti-climatic because due to some bad storms last year and a rough drought this summer, selection was super limited and we didn't even get to do a tractor ride. Equally anti-climatic were his first few Vikings games--it's starting to look like he might be a bad-luck charm, but at least he's a cute bad-luck charm (and his brothers aren't half-bad either!)