Life with a Baby: 8 Months!

After a 2 month break, here I am trying to recall what the heck has happened since my last update (it’s a blur!). Ok, so I have learned that babies change a lot in 2 months time! Adriana has been slowly transforming from a baby into a little girl (ok, not really but you know what I mean…), especially over the past couple weeks. Her personality is emerging rapidly. It’s been the most amazing thing to experience! She’s so squirmy, coy, goofy, curious, and can be very serious and focused too. I know every parent says this but I honestly fall more in love with her every day. I miss her at night when she sleeps (but revel in some alone time too, of course). She’s the only person I ever greet with a huge smile and open arms at 6am no matter how bleary-eyed I may be. What she does to my heart is just beyond.

Biggest news in the past week – we have an “army crawler” on our hands. Shit is gettin’ real! It started when my mom was here visiting and we were all screaming with joy (or terror…haha) as she scooted across the room. If you haven’t seen a baby army crawl you must watch a video on Youtube. It’s equally hilarious yet fascinating all at once. I don’t even think I can army crawl if I tried. Mad skills those babies have. We’re full into the “can’t take our eyes off her” stage which I’m pretty sure never ends? She’s also sitting up unassisted now after many weeks of toppling over. Whenever she sits up she looks like such a big girl!

We had a babyproofing company come over for a consultation a month ago. We’re going to order a few gates and some cupboard locks this week.

Adriana went through a week of saying BA BA BA BA BA BA BA. It was hilarious and we somehow caught it on video. Pretty much right after we shot the video, she stopped and has only let out a few ba ba’s since. She’s onto us! I’m sure it’ll return though. One thing that hasn’t stopped is my embarrassing parental video commentary. Do you know how much my sister and I teased my dad for doing that exact same thing in all of our childhood videos? Yea, now it’s me.

“ba ba ba ba”

“Oh! and then what happened???”

Her laugh has gone from a gasping-for-air noise to more of a little girl giggle now and then. She will laugh like crazy if we make weird faces at her. She loves to make “who” noises a lot still. Our little owl. She is making this “poof” noise recently like she’s blowing a puff of air out of her mouth and she’s also rolling her tongue in all these crazy positions and clicking it. Oh and still very much doing “The Mariah” squeaks!

I’m still nursing on demand. I absolutely cherish our breastfeeding time together. She’s gotten so silly during feedings though! Most of the time (during the day) she just pokes my face, squirms, and pulls my hair!! lol. As I mentioned, we introduced solids after 6 months (homemade veggie and fruit purees), but she still hasn’t shown too much interest yet. She still has a bit of a gag reflex every now and then so we’re not forcing it. I know babies all take to food at different times so I’m not too worried about it and she’s gaining weight steadily. She also still won’t take a bottle or sippy cup yet – a boob girl through and through! If we have another baby in the future, I’ll most likely try to introduce the bottle a bit earlier next time, but in A’s case we waited until 8 weeks because she had so many latching issues. There’s no right or wrong answer, I suppose! Everyone asks me if it’s hard with her not taking a bottle or eating solids yet, but it’s actually gotten so much easier than it used to be (just like many of you told me it would). Her feeds now are so short – she’s done in around 5 minutes (a bit longer overnight or before naps, but that’s because I let her sleep on me a bit). Because I work from home it’s not a big issue, but if I worked out of the house it would be a much more pressing issue to figure out. So I can’t complain. We’re still trying the solids regularly and I’m sure she will come around on her own timeline.

Her sleep is about the same as my last update. She’s still going down around 6:30-7pm. Some nights it takes her a while to fall asleep, others not too long. If she’s not super sleepy she will just play in her crib until she falls asleep (she loves her musical aquarium). Her first wake up of the night tends to be around 2am lately and then she has been waking up around 5:30-6am. She seems to have shifted to an earlier wake up time now that the mornings are brighter. Some mornings I feed her and she’ll go back to sleep, but it’s rare. I’ve been asked if she’s sleeping through the night yet. Well, she has slept through the night twice so far! This gives me hope, hah. But it’s not consistent by any means yet.

She is getting a lot of use out of her toys now and is really interactive with them. If the toy or stuffy has EYES she loves it even more and will just stare into it’s eyes with a big smile. So silly. She LOVES her exersaucer now.

My mom came to visit us around Mother’s Day for the week. It was such a great visit! They hadn’t seen each other since Christmas, but she took to her Mimi right away. Eric and I also had our first date night since pre-baby. It was awesome…and needed. We cleaned up pretty well…who knew! I put Adriana down for the night and then we headed out. Then we later found out that she was quite the little monkey for her Mimi! On Mother’s Day, Eric asked what I wanted and I said a home-cooked meal would be amazing since I rarely get a break from recipe development. He treated my mom and I to a huge brunch featuring 5 of my recipes from the next Oh She Glows cookbook. He was nervous about pulling it off, but he nailed it. We were in heaven with all this great food!

We had a great long weekend including celebrating my first birthday as a mama, and a great visit yesterday with family at my Aunt and Uncles. We got to meet the newest member of the family too – my Aunt’s baby girl who is 5.5 months younger than Adriana. Someone was pretty taken by her and kept wanting to chew her tiny baby hands! lol.

Loves: Walks, silly faces, music (especially Eric on guitar), Itsy Bitsy Spider song (her fav), other babies, animals (Sketchie is her favourite thing in the world), bath times (really into splashing the water right now), being outside, new places/people watching, discovering new objects, screaming at Sketchie, being tickled, chewing everything, her musical keyboard and stackable toys, “blowing raspberries”.

Dislikes: Waking up grumpy and getting a diaper changed, not getting enough sleep, sitting or being held in one spot for too long (or being in a car seat when she just wants to squirm), hiccups, getting dressed.

What else? Oh still no teeth yet!

One of my biggest lessons of motherhood so far: I’ve realized that I really don’t give a rats ass what some of the guilt-trippy baby experts tell me I “should” be doing (aside from actual evidence-based medical recommendations from our pediatrician, of course). I remember when A was a newborn I would feel guilt after reading certain baby books (like the ones that say never nurse them to sleep or never do x, y, z because you will form a life-long bad habit…ugh), but as we’ve become more comfortable in our roles Eric and I have both realized that we’re doing what’s right for our family and that’s what matters. Is the baby fed, safe, warm, loved, and happy? Well keep on chugging along. No guilt required.