Happy 8 Months Old Peanut!

Dear Peanut,

You turned 8 months old yesterday. I seem to start off all of these monthly updates to you by telling you how fast you're growing and how I would like you to slow the hell down please. So I will try not to dwell on that this month, although...damn. Too fast. Okay, sorry.

Your personality is really starting to show and you, my dear, are hysterical. You are SO different from your brother. He was quiet and sweet and sensitive and you are loud and boisterous and funny and inquisitive and...well just an entirely different person. I love it. You are constantly checking out the world around you be it sitting at home on the floor, or sitting in a high chair at a restaurant, or sitting in your car seat looking out the window. You want to see it all. And don't leave anything out! You whip your head and body around to see anything and everything that is occurring around you. You are never sitting still. Those toys that I have been giving you to play with for the last couple of months? You are so over them. Been there, done that. But those shiny toys with the small parts that your brother plays with? Much more interesting. Speaking of your brother, you have started to annoy him lately by getting into all of his stuff. I smile and pull you away from his things and try and "redirect" you to something else, but then I secretly laugh as I walk away because your brother needs to learn to have his stuff mussed up a little bit. It's good for him. You are good for him. You are teaching him that he isn't the center of the entire universe and that life is pretty interesting when you look at it through your eyes.

In the past month you have started making this...face, for lack of a better term. It is more of a whole body reaction to when you see something you like. You scrunch up your entire face so that your nose wrinkles and you make a sniffing sound out of your nose. It doesn't translate well to words. I have it on video to show you later, but for now, here is a photo of the face:

You do this any time I come near you or anytime you find anything that you should smile about. Anytime you are going to smile you lay out with this goofy look. Just seems to go with your personality. Another thing you are doing this month (although this one is not nearly as charming) is living the whole "stranger danger" thing. Not only do you NOT want to be held or touched or even looked at by anyone except Mommy, but if I dare walk out of the room you feel the need to scream. I would really love it if you would grow out of this phase quickly. See there are things that I need to do. Like take a shower. Or make some dinner. Or fold some laundry. And it is completely unnecessary for you to melt down into a puddle of screams when I am simply clearing your brother's dinner plate. I will be back. I swear. I am not going anywhere. The only other person who you deem is acceptable is your Gigi, who you have simply fallen in love with recently. There are many others who you will tolerate, but only after they have been around for at least a half an hour and you have had sufficient time to check them out and decide for yourself if they can be trusted.

You are so close to moving that it scares me. You can go from sitting to a crawl position and back to sitting by yourself now. You can pretty much get anywhere you want to go, although you haven't broken out into a full-on crawl yet. You crawl backwards like a champ, although that just pisses you off because you find yourself getting further and further away from whatever object you were trying to reach. You have also started to pull yourself up to a standing position. This one really scares me because it smacks of the inevitable walking. Standing by yourself? Seriously. Not time for that yet. Sit your little butt back down, girl. Relax...there is plenty of time for that. But you do it anyway. You pull yourself up on the ottoman in the living room and when you do it, you are SO damn proud of yourself that I can't help but smile for you. Here is an example of the look on your face after you achieve standing position:
It's a mixture of "I RULE!" and "Holy shit, what the hell just happened?" Go with the second one and just sit back down and relax. Plenty of time, plenty of time...

You are in the middle of experiencing your first holiday season and you seem to be digging it. As long as all these relatives that seem to want to hold you will leave you alone and let you stay with Mommy you are cool. But god forbid Mommy give you off to your uncle or your Gramps, or ANYONE for that matter. You scream. But other than that you are digging the lights and the Christmas tree and even though you don't so much care about the presents, the BOWS are just the shit as far as you're concerned. Here you are posing with your brother at one of our Christmas celebrations:
The only other thing that is really changing is your food. Even though Mommy is still a little culture shocked by your brother, a few well-meaning friends have pointed out that you are MORE THAN ready for finger foods and I need to lighten up on the pureed stuff. Your brother didn't swallow anything besides pureed foods until he was 18 months old. Surely you are far too young for such nonsense. Apparently not. I hooked you up with some sourdough bread and some pasta and today some peas and some deli meat turkey and you LOVED it. Message taken. You are a big girl and I need to treat you as such. I am learning my darling. You are SO damn different from your brother that sometimes I feel as though I have never done this whole parenting thing before. But I swear, I have. I swear I am supposed to know what I am doing...

Okay, here's your day in the life. You wake up around 7:00am and nurse on one side. After that I get up and pump the other side. You hang out in bed with me and your brother for a while and then get up to play. At around 9:00am you have your breakfast which usually consists of either rice cereal or oatmeal mixed with like 4 cubes of fruit. Then around 10:00am you nurse and go down for your morning nap. You still take two naps a day but usually one of them is a "good" nap (meaning at least two hours) and one of them is a little cat nap of around half an hour or so. But you switch it up. Some days you sleep in the morning, some days you sleep in the afternoon. So I never know. Once you get up from your nap you hang out and play until lunch. I nurse you again before you eat and then you get at least 5 cubes of veggies and a fruit (and now a whole mess of finger foods). You are trying to learn how to drink out of a sippy cup but at this point you still just chew on it. After lunch we head out and do whatever we are going to do with our day. At around 2:30 or 3:00 you nurse again and go down for your afternoon nap. Then once you get up we get ready for dinner where you eat at least 5 cubes and lots of finger foods. You usually eat the pureed stuff and then get a portion of whatever I am having for dinner cut up really small for you. Then you play, or scream depending on where I am in the room, until it is time for bed. We start the bed process at 7:30 by getting into jammies and our sleep sack and then nursing. You are in your crib by 8:00 and usually fall asleep within 10 minutes. You still wake up sometimes during the night if you end up on your tummy and need me to flip you over and give you your binky, but unless something is seriously wrong, you don't eat again until the morning. And besides those little interruptions, you sleep through the night just wonderfully. Thank you for that.

You are still my ray of sunshine. You are getting to be more and more challenging but I am enjoying seeing you develop into your own little person. I love who you are and who you are growing into and I am so proud of the big girl that you are insisting on becoming. You make me smile SO many times a day that I have lost count. You are beautiful and perfect and my little angel. I love you Peanut. Happy 8 months old.
(Your monthly bean bag shot. The only one where you weren't making that face that I referenced above...)