Eight Months

Brock turned 8 months old this past Saturday. He's changing so much now and learning so many new things. This hasn't been an easy month because we had a couple of weeks with some weird behaviors and Brock is developing a lot more self-determination and personal preferences, but I guess that's to be expected. We didn't have to go to the doctor for a checkup this month, but from what I can tell he seems to be holding steady at about 20 pounds and 27 inches. He's moving around a lot more now so I imagine his weight gain will level off for a little while.

These are some of Brock's patterns and accomplishments for the time between the 7th and 8th months:

• At 30 weeks, his first tooth popped through on the bottom right side. Then about three days later the bottom left tooth came in as well. No sign of the top teeth yet.
• He likes to have conversations in screams and squeals. Brock doesn't really babble with words like bababa or anything. He will occasionally say some consonants, but his preferred method of communication is just to shriek and wait for one of us to shriek back. We will go back and forth for a while doing this until he has said what he needs to say.
• He can sit up independently pretty well now. If he has something in his hands that he's focused on, he will stay upright for a good long time, but if he's busy with things on the floor around him, he falls over more quickly. He's not pulling up to a sitting position yet though.
• Brock found his private parts this month. Whenever I take his diaper off, he will sometimes reach down and immediately grab himself which is really annoying when he has a dirty diaper because his fingers always go right into the poop. Then I have to quickly clean them before they go straight to the mouth.
• On that same note, it's getting a lot harder to change his diaper because he always wants to roll over on the changing table now. I basically have to wrestle him, hold him down, or distract him with some kind of random object like a clothes hanger or socks or his feet.
• It also got a lot more difficult this month to clip his nails. In past months, I would normally do this while he was nursing, but he has become so aware of and curious about everything now that he gets distracted when I try to clip them, and he stops nursing and starts trying to grab the clippers. Needless to say, it takes forever to clip ten tiny fingernails (and we won't even talk about the toenails).
• I'm not quite sure when it happened, but Brock doesn't mind being on his stomach anymore. I think it was sometime between five and seven months actually, but I didn't think about it until this month when he was constantly trying to wiggle away from me onto his belly at diaper change time. He loves to roll around on the floor to get places and can cover a lot of ground in just a few minutes if he's trying to go somewhere specific.
• He can stand up really well with support. His legs seem to be pretty strong and he likes standing to play with his LeapFrog activity table.
• Something happened around 31 weeks and he had some very rough nights. He wasn't taking great naps during the day and would get tired really early in the evening at like 6:00 but we would try keeping him up at least until 7:00. Then when I would try to nurse him before bed he would go into an all-out meltdown and scream and cry and basically just freak out. He would also wake up in the middle of the night crying, which he doesn't normally ever do. We tried Tylenol, putting him to bed earlier, doing the routine in a different room, and all kinds of other stuff but he still had the meltdowns for several nights in a row. Finally at some point I tried giving him Orajel before I nursed him and it seemed to do the trick. So I guess it was just teething, but I'm still not positive.
• Brock got the croup (is it "the croup" or just "croup", I'm still not sure) at 34 weeks and we had to go to the emergency room (our first visit) because he was having trouble breathing at night. That week we again experienced the pre-bedtime meltdowns and night waking for several nights in a row so I'm thinking now that this is what he does when he's either sick or something is hurting him. It's insane though... he's going to have to learn some sign language or some other method of letting us know he doesn't feel well because those nighttime freakouts are disturbing and distressing.
• He's still somewhere between a 3 and 4 hour schedule. He usually goes between 3 and 3.5 hours for feedings in the mornings and then by afternoon/evening he stretches it out more to 4 hours. He started off the month nursing about 5 times a day and by the end of the month he's averaging more like 4 times a day. He has solids 3 times a day. He has also gotten great at finger foods and self-feeding. He had mastered the puffs by the end of the month and is working on some other foods like green beans and Cheerios.
• We transitioned through a time change this month. The first couple of weeks were rough, but things started smoothing out during the third week after the change. I realized what a predictable routine he had set up when he was waking up exactly one hour earlier when the time changed. He's still not completely back to his 7:00-7:30 wake up time, sometimes it's more like 6:30, but I think we'll get there again eventually (and then it will be time for the Spring time change probably). He's at least able to stay up later without getting upset now.

Those were some of the most significant changes this month. I love that he is always so happy and friendly and likes to smile and laugh. He is really becoming a busy little guy and is no longer content just to sit and relax unless he's tired. He wants to touch and eat everything and pays attention to all the things we do now, even little things like turning off a light or opening a door. You can just see him learning and discovering stuff and trying to figure everything out in his mind, and it's fascinating to me. I get lost sometimes just watching him and seeing him accomplishing all these new things. I don't think it will ever get old to me.