Fleeting Turkey Feet: 8 months

My big girl is 8 months old!

This month, during the bear photo shoot, I caught some of her typical behaviors. Such as putting lots of things in her mouth....

Finding the smallest part, or tag, on an item and investigating it....

Putting one leg forward and one leg back, to rock back and forth and move around....

....and reaching for paper or really anything that she feels she needs to have....

At 8 months Elsie's biggest change is how much she moves and gets the things she wants. I know I'll look back on this and wish she moved as little as she did now. She now scoots around while sitting up. She mostly just scoots in circles though. I will put her down, look away for a minute, and then she has turned all the way around. She often also will put one leg forward and one back, then lean forward and rock in that position or kind of scoot around in that position a little bit to reach for something. At least half of the time, she falls on her face or falls forward and quickly moves into a roll.

She reaches for anything that is within 3 feet of her. She will also reach for things and make noises ( telling us to give her what she wants!).

She spends most of her free time rotating between the floor, her high chair, and her jumparoo.

She sits with her feet crossed a lot! When she is sitting, her feet are often crossed. I took a picture of her like that tonight...

But she got mad at me for putting her down and started fussing and shaking her arms up and down.

She does this when she is trying to tell us what she wants which sometimes means "Pick me up!" but other times means "Give me that paper!" ...reach..."Seriously, I want that paper!"

She is getting over a cold right now. After she really got sick, we could tell because she wasn't acting like herself. Mainly, she did the bouncy arms to get picked up a lot and she also would not finish her bottles all the way.

Has been doing well at daycare. She loves the kids and the kids love her.

She is starting to make a lot more word sounds. A coupl weeks ago I laid her on the diaper table and she said "Dada" I dont think she says it as an actual words but she uses it now and again and especially when she is about to get her diaper changed. She also says mom, gaga, hi, and lots of other funny sounds.

Her latest weight was at 18lb 15oz with clothes and diaper. She is wearing lots of 12 month clothes now but still has plenty of 9 months in there and some 6 months too.

Has been sleeping so good lately that I almost don't want to jinx it by admitting it. She goes down for bed between 7:30-8:00, sometimes even a little earlier if she is a sleepyhead. She wakes up for the day between 6:45-7:15. There have even been a few mornings where I had to wake her up around 6:45 so I could feed her before I left for work.

She nurses/bottles 4 times a day and eats solids 3 times. Pretty scheduled with this now. Nurses when she wakes up and then has bottles around 10:30, 3:30, and 6:30. Eats oatmeal about 8, lunch at 12, and dinner about 5. WE haven't tried new solids lately. We made her turkey but haven't given any yet since she got sick.

Also quite scheduled with the naps now. Morning nap is about 9-10:30 and afternoon is about 1:30-3:30. Her morning naps are shorter for us on the weekend and sometimes she still ends up taking 3 naps.

She does this goofy swivel like wave thing with her hand.

The spitting up has gone way way down but we still don't go a day without dealing with it at some point. She still also has a clogged tear duct on the left.

And with that, here are some more pics from the last month...

I took these a few weeks back because of how quickly she turned herself around to face the blanket.

It has been a very warm winter. This was one of the days we didn't put a hat on Elsie but by the time we left my parents' house again, she needed one. So we invented this and she goes with the flow...