The Michael Family Musings: Nate, Month 8

Stats:
Weight: 17 lbs. 12 oz. (as of 2 days ago) he’s up to the 33^rd percentile. Definitely making progress!

Height: probably 28ish inches?

Size: 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers

Appearance: I feel like he’s grown up a lot this month. Probably just my imagination, but I feel like his features have shifted from little bitty baby to closer to toddler.

Food:

Food is pretty close to last month. Still getting breastmilk 3x per day; twice in a bottle/sippy cup and one nursing session (which is like, 15 minutes tops). He is getting much better with a sippy cup, but he’s still not all the way there. He generally takes 8 ounces from the bottle at a time. He also has a few ounces of water a day. We’re going strong with the purees. He still eats 4 of the 4 ounce containers throughout the day. We’ve tried a few of the meat ones, and he seems to like them so far. Still doesn’t like green beans, and he’ll only eat pumpkin if it’s in a medley. Bananas are still his favorite. We’ve also introduced some “real” food this month. He’s had little pieces of bread, french fries, cooked carrots, mango, tomato, sweet potato, Cheerios, and two tiny bites of ice cream. All real food has gotten positive reactions so far. I have to be really careful with the food though. He hasn’t mastered the pincer grasp, so he’ll take a handful if he’s able and has gagged a few times. I generally try to give him only a few pieces at a time.

Sleep:

Sleep overall has been better this month than last. He’s still going to bed around 8:30-9 and sleeps until 6:30-7 most mornings. If he wakes up much before 7, I usually try to get him back to sleep. He hasn’t had as many middle of the night wake-ups this month either, though they’re still happening about once a week. We’re using the Ferber method again for sleep training, but I think it’s taking longer to catch on since his wake ups aren’t every night. Still at about 10 hours of sleep a night, though sometimes he’ll surprise us and do 11 or 12.

Naps are fairly consistent, but he rarely takes one longer than an hour. I can only remember 3 naps this past month that have been longer than that (and one happened today). 45 minutes-1 hour is pretty typical for him, sometimes as short as 20-30 minutes though. Most days he takes 3 naps a day, unless one of his first two are on the longer side.

His eat/sleep schedule looks something like this:
6:30-7a – wake up and have a bottle
9-9:30 – nap
11:00ish – solids
1-2p – nap
3ish- nurse
5ish– nap
6-6:30 – solids
8:30-9 – bottle and bedtime

We have playtime or run errands between eating and sleeping.

Milestones:

Still only two teeth, but he has 2 little white bumps on the top gums, so I think we’ll have some more teeth soon!

Sitting up fully independently.

He cruises around holding onto the furniture. He wants to walk so badly!

He’s stood on his own for a few seconds at a time a couple of times. I’m really not ready for a walker!

He’s starting to understand what certain things/people are. (i.e. if I say, ‘Nate, where’s your ball?’ if he can see the ball he’ll look at it/crawl towards it).

Still lots of babbling. No new consonant sounds that I can remember, but he’s added ‘e’ to his vowel vocabulary. I’m convinced his first word is either going to be ‘ball’ or ‘dada’.

He’s started signing! He does ‘milk’ and ‘more’ pretty consistently. I think he’s done ‘water’ and ‘eat’ a few times too, but it’s hard to tell because he touches his face/mouth a lot. We’re still working on ‘thank you’, ‘all done’, and ‘sister’. He also made up his own sign for ‘dog’. This was actually pretty impressive. We noticed that he was moving his fingers a certain way a lot (kind of looks like he’s trying to snap). I caught on to the fact that he did it more around the dogs. Now, when you say ‘Nate, where are the puppies?’ or if he sees a dog, he usually does it. He’s also made a ‘sentence’ a few times (‘more milk’).

He’s started climbing on things that are relatively low to the ground. Between this and pulling up, he ends up with plenty of head bruises. He’s already a lot faster than mom is!

Things I want to remember about this month:

Nate’s first 4^th of July! We had some family in town, and he wasn’t scared of the fireworks at all! He also went on his first boat ride. It was a great weekend.

Nate attended his first baseball game! I was actually surprised how well he did. He got fussy a few times, but we got lawn seats so he was able to crawl around. He also took 2 short naps at the game, and enjoyed a few small pieces of funnel cake.

He’s started reaching for me when he wants picked up.

He is such a happy baby. He smiles all the time.

His reaction to new foods. He likes most everything!

His favorite things:

Big sister, snuggling, peek-a-boo, balls, banging toys on things and/or together, chewing on his fingers, being held, crawling, being tickled, daddy’s beard, mommy’s singing, the dogs, dogs in general, grabbing faces, pulling hair, food, splashing, Elmo videos

And now, the pictures!