8 Months Old

I think you look just like Lane did in this photo.

Dear Noel,

Last week you turned eight months old. This has been a big month for you! You learned how to crawl, although you still army crawl a lot of the time as well. You learned how to get yourself to a sitting position on your own. And you learned how to pull up, although at this point once you get yourself up, that's about all you can do, and then you stand there looking around until you get tired and whine for someone to help you down. You also really, really enjoy climbing all over things. If someone is sitting down, you want to crawl onto their legs, over their legs, around their legs, and so on. You're really, really funny.

You also love to eat. I think that you eat more than Lane did when she was your age, but you're about the same size as she was. An average day for you in food looks like this: 1/2 cup of yogurt and 1/2 piece of fruit for breakfast, 1/2 cup vegetables and 1/2 cup cereal for lunch, and 1/2 cup veggies, 1/2 cup cereal, and an egg yolk for dinner. Throw a bunch of Cheerios, a banana, the rest of your piece of fruit from breakfast, and possibly another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of veggies in there and there's your daily menu. And you're still nursing four times a day, on occasion five times. You are a very impatient nurser, getting either really mad when it gets difficult (if you're really hungry), or just completely uninterested. Most days I think about how I can't wait to wean you, because our nursing relationship is not one that is usually enjoyable for me, and you just seem frustrated most of the time. But we're a little over eight months in and I think we can make it four more. I'll just be glad when you can get all of your food as quickly as you want it.

Showing off your two chompers.

Your eyes are still blue, and they light up when you're excited. You love to give us "love hits," where you smack us in the face with pure delight. You give us big, open-mouthed kisses when we make kissy noises at you at say "Gimme a kiss!" in a sweet voice. You know your name now and will turn to look at us when we say it. You still love your sister and want to do whatever she's doing, which she's not too happy about most of the time. Your attention span is pretty short, though, and you move from toy to toy really quickly. If you had your choice, you'd spend all your waking hours either eating or sitting in someone's lap. Or playing peek-a-boo with Lane. You crack up like crazy when she hides under the blow-up pool and peeks out at you from underneath it...it's your favorite game.

Most days you're a champion sleeper, taking two 1.5-hour naps and sleeping 11-12 hours at night. We're still working out the kinks in moving you from three naps a day to two and it's caused you to get to bed a little too early most nights, and therefore wake up a little too early each morning, but I think in another couple weeks you'll be straightened out.

You have the attention span of a goldfish.

Noel, you are so sweet and it's so fun to watch you interact with Lane. Watching you interact with her, watch her, laugh at her, and try to play with her is so fun and is something we didn't get to see Lane do when she was your age. It's special that we get to watch you do something that she never did, which is to be enthralled with your sibling. We all love you so much and love watching you grow and develop and learn new things. It's been another fun month, and as you get more capable of doing things on your own, you just get even more fun.

I love you,

Mommy