Eight Months

On 1/11/11 our little boy turned 8 months old!  He's definitely not a newborn anymore.  I can really see it when we head to playgroups and Ben is one of the older of the second siblings in attendance.  He's learning and growing so much everyday.

At eight months old, Benny likes to eat!  This is much different than his older brother.  He can down two 4 oz. containers of yogurt in one sitting.  While he's still mainly eating purees, he eyes everything that we eat and looks like he can't wait to dig in.  His normal diet consists of a breakfast of pureed fruit, a lunch of yogurt, a dinner of pureed vegetables with milk and Cheerios, baby crackers, bananas, and even the rare dill pickle for snacks.  I actually saw the frantic, panicking hungry baby face for the first time ever this month.  Lots of other mothers have talked about how their baby gets frantic and cries when they run out of food and can't get more fast enough.  I haven't witnessed this until Benny arrived.

 

He's still a happy baby, except when he's getting teeth.  He's pretty content with whatever life throws his way.  He'll play by himself, he is easy going and happy to sit with most people, even strangers.  While he's a happy baby he's a little Jeckyll and Hyde. At night, when he wakes up, he's hysterical and impossible to settle.  However, he is getting closer to sleeping through the night and usually goes a couple nights a week without getting out of his crib at all during the night.  We're getting somewhere.

Ben is fairly content to watch what is going on around him.  As a result, he doesn't want to go out and do everything right away.  While he has gotten to be a great sitter, he really has no desire to get up and crawl or walk away.  When we put him on his tummy, placing something just out of reach to encourage crawling, he'll reach to grab the toy, clutch it in his hands, and roll over to his back immediately to play.  I tend to think he'll go straight to walking and skip crawling altogether.

Ben and Evan are starting to play together a little.  Evan likes to show him things, briefly.  I can tell they're going to have a lot of fun when they get older, and also get into it sometimes.  Now that Ben takes an interest in toys and sometimes plays with what Evan wants, Evan gets a bit cranky about it, and I've heard "Mine, Ben!" come out of his mouth more than once.

As always, I can't wait to see what Ben does next and what little person he continues to become.

(Benny at 8 months, and for comparison...)

 

(A much smaller Ben at 7 months) 

(Evan at the same age)