8 Months Old!

8 months old! The first year of growing is amazing. Eloise is literally a different baby from last month. I'm worried that I haven't been specific enough with updates and I won't remember when she did certain things (I'm already forgetting if something happened at 4 months or 5 months or did she do that at 3.5 months or 2 months? Mommy-brain in full effect). My parents didn't have a blog to keep track of me but my mom did a very good job with my baby book. There are nice monthly summaries of how much I was sleeping, eating, playing, moving, following meredith, etc... I have yet to go back and re-read all of my blog entries so hopefully I have been capturing enough Eloise detail!

This was the most active photo session yet! I just laugh at these photos because Eloise could not be kept still, she is all over the place and into everything!!!







After she wiggled right out of the chair, I tried a variety of props to get her to stay in place a little longer...







Okay so the 8 month details, perhaps a little boring but for the records...

Eloise sleeps about 11-12 hours at night. She usually goes to bed around 7pm and wakes up around 6:30-7am. The last few weeks have been really good, no random waking up in the night. Although Tom has also finally convinced me to just leave the darn monitor OFF at night so perhaps that is helping too. Her naps are semi-regular. They average 1.5 hours and are usually around 9:00am and 1:30pm. Of course, Eloise is not a little machine so there are many fluctuations to her "schedule". Just this week she took a 3 hour nap one morning. I never expect her to sleep that long so I didn't really take advantage of the time, I kept waiting for her to wake up! I was chatting with some girlfriend the other night and we all realized the depressing truth that even when your baby "sleeps through the night" there is always SOMETHING. Sure Eloise sleeps through the night but when she finally pops a tooth we may go through a week of bad sleeping? Or when she starts walking maybe that will lead to a week of waking up a night? Or the classic Eloise move, a random dirty diaper that occurs just after bedtime and we have to wake HER up to change it.

Food has become a more challenging experience. We're at a cross-roads of self feeding vs. spoon fed. The score is Eloise-1 and Mommy-0. She just doesn't want me putting a spoon in her mouth anymore. She turns her head and bats it away with her hands. She is getting pretty good at feeding herself so I'm trying to not worry too much that she is mainly eating the equivalent of baby cheetos (gerber puffs) and not getting a "well-balanced diet". We've just started trying to do 3 meals, breakfast being the last meal we've added. She's still not that hungry at breakfast but it's becoming part of the routine. She does enjoy eating the puffs, baby cookie-cracker things, pieces of cheddar cheese, chicken, cottage cheese, and for the first time yesterday, watermelon. As you can see, a very well balanced diet :) At first she practically inhaled whatever baby food we could get in her mouth so I can't help but worry that she isn't eating enough. I wish I could see into the future and know she will eventually eat a larger variety of foods but that can't happen so I'm trying to keep it all in perspective.

Eloise's main mode of transportation is her "creep" across the floor. She is really fast and I had to set up a furniture blockade to keep her from knocking over Parker's water dish. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth but then slumps back to her stomach. I did catch her practicing her moves in her crib. She went from her hands and knees to straightening out her legs into a downward dog position! She hasn't done this outside of the crib yet, she must prefer to do her yogi training in private. Standing is still one of her favorite positions. She creeps over to me and tries to grab my hands. So then I put my two hands out, she grabs hold and pulls herself up to standing position (with a tiny bit of help from me). She also lifts her arms up to be picked up but she has been doing that for awhile...whoops forgot when that first started.


We've heard a lot more "words" the past two weeks. Lots of bababababa, dadadadada, and I swear the other day when the plumber was packing up his tools she said "all done". She likes to scream/sing and really likes it when her sounds are repeated back to her. I can tell that she understands some things being said to her or at least the intent. We have started saying NO at times, like when she heads for Parker's food, and she usually stops, looks at us, and then continues on her way. Pretty typical for her age! Tom and I are so excited for the first real words. I'm guessing it will be dada or pah-ka (parker, her favorite toy/beloved family dog).


Ellie and I have been going to an ECFE class in Minnetonka. It's especially fun because our friends Robyn and Charlie and Heather and Drew are in the class too. The class ends at 7pm which is usually bedtime for Eloise and apparently for a lot of the other little ones in the class, I like to refer to it as meltdown time. It's kind of entertaining to see all of the babies slowly start to unravel!

For entertainment, Eloise really enjoys opening and closing her bottom dresser drawers, unscrewing the knob on her drawers (it usually takes a few days of repeated twisting), pulling the door stops so they make that BO-IIIING noise, banging toys to make noise, following Parker and grabbing for his toy while he continually backs away, reading books (I swear she knows how to turn the page, just ask for a demo next time we're around), and studying small particles of who-know's-what that she finds on the floor. We've also noticed that she's starting to enjoy playing little games where she interacts with us. One example is she holds a toy and tries to put it in our mouth. We bite it (sanitary, I know) and then she shakes it around until she pulls it out. This repeats over and over. Peek-a-boo types of games have also become really fun and during bathtime she regularly looks for her dad in the mirror.

Overall Eloise is a really happy, inquisitive, busy baby. I think that about sums it up. On to the 9th month!