Eight Months Old

Eight months old already!  Such a fun age, with a little bit of personality starting to show through.

Beckett started making a lot of new sounds this month.  His favorite right now is thu-thu-thu.  I guess he could surprise us with a first word at some point, but right now it seems he’s a long way from connecting a sound with anything in particular.  Although he can identify certain things—like when we say, “Where’s Maya?” he’ll look around on the floor for her.

He is not as easy of a car passenger this month.  Falling asleep in the car is sooooo last month, apparently.  He fusses quite a bit in the car, which is unusual.

I’m sad to say that the age of him being able to do no wrong is slipping away.  Until now he hasn’t had the capacity to do anything “wrong”—if he threw food or scratched someone or pulled my hair, it was totally inadvertent.  But I think we’re teetering on the verge of some of that behavior being intentional.  It makes me so sad that disciplining is right around the corner.  I’ve already had to say, “No, sir.” several times, typically when he scratches my face really hard over and over again like a Velociraptor while I'm nursing him.  We call that move the “Love Claw.”

On the other hand, I’m really enjoying watching him learn.  If he’s on a blanket and wants a toy that is far away, he figured out that he can just pull on the blanket and it’ll come to him.  If I’m holding him he’ll often reach for someone else (which they find completely endearing), only to grab their shirt with one hand to pull them close enough to grab their necklace/glasses/hat/etc. with the other.  Tricky, tricky!

He has a new "trick."  One day he started clasping his hands together and then raising them over his head and doing this move like he's chopping wood.  We nicknamed it his tomahawk move and started chanting "tomahawk, tomahawk, tomahawk" when he'd do it.  Then at some point we realized that if we say "tomahawk!" then he'll do his move on command.  It's pretty funny.

In other news, he’s mobile!!  He showed no interest in trying to crawl or move around much until pretty much exactly his seven-month birthday.  Then he really took off.  He quickly learned to go from sitting to on his belly, where he could then turn and scoot backwards pretty well.  He can flip to his back but doesn’t do it much since he’s more mobile on his stomach.  About halfway through the month he started going from a sitting position to sort of a crawling position, where he would rock and then eventually slide down to his belly.  Toward the end of the month he was VERY close to crawling and at first glance it seemed like he is crawling because he spent a lot of time on his knees, but he wasn't quite moving them forward.  Then two days before his eight-month birthday, he took his first real crawl!

His sleep is the same, if anything it’s a little worse than before.  He is more likely to wake up closer to 5:30am than 6am it seems.  Oh well.  We traveled some this month and slipped back into the habit of rocking him to sleep.  We keep talking about teaching him to fall asleep on his own again (at bedtime and also for naps), but we’ll see if we can follow through.

He continues to try new food every week.  His main foods are still traditional veggies and fruit, but we let him taste a lot of other foods that we eat—like refried beans, mashed potatoes, guacamole, a pickle, etc.  So far he hasn't met a single food that he hasn't loved!  Eating out with him has become quite an adventure.  And I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Sigh.

Things we did this month:

-Spent our first extended time apart; Beckett spent a long weekend with Grams and Grandpops while Kolby and I had a mini-vacation to Wimberley with our friends Tyler and Erin

-Beckett and I road-tripped to Houston for a baby shower

-First family vacation-- to Chicago!

-Had a play date with baby Caroline and another with baby Declan and baby Lilly
-Beckett participated in his first talent show, at Kolby's grandparents' retirement community

Things Beckett loves:
-MOVING!
-Learning to play catch with a ball
-Scooting backwards, which often lands him backed into a corner or stuck under the couch

-Tomahawk move
-Trying pickles (and other plate food) in his mesh teether
-Playing on beds
-Riding around in a stroller

-Shaking his head no
-Being bounced to sleep (he's seriously addicted to the exercise ball)

Things I love about Beckett:

-His head is impossibly fuzzy.  I could recognize the feeling of his hair out of 1,000 babies in a blind test (you know, if such tests existed).
-It's fun to watch him work really hard to learn/do new things

-Brushing his hair (and parting it, like a big boy)
-When he stays up too late that when I feed him he flashes back to the milk drunk newborn phase
-How he's happy and in a good mood all the time (well, except for the car...)

Chicago

At the end of July we embarked on our very first vacation as a family of three, to Chicago!

We had the.best.time in the world.

All summer long I tried to plan a family vacation, but I just couldn’t land on a destination.  So many things sounded like fun, but not fun with a baby.  I wanted to find something that would be better with Beckett along, not worse.  Example: renting a house on a lake.  Relaxing, right?  Unless you were trying to keep a 7-month old entertained.  Then a friend (shout out, Erin!) suggested Chicago.  The idea kept sounding better and better.  I found a last-minute KILLER deal on Priceline, and BAM—we were off!  With Chicago being a walking city and Beckett loving riding in a stroller, plus the long list of fun things to do and places to see—I definitely give it an A+ for a baby-friendly vacation destination.

All credit for the fun we had on the trip goes to Beckett for being such a stinkin’ easy baby.  He did great on his first flight (hello 5am!) and continued to be a total dream with naps, flexibility, mood, etc. as we toted him all.over the city and back.  A second shout out goes to our CityMini Elite stroller.  We were basically a walking infomercial for that thing.  I won’t bore you with the details, but that thing scored some major points as we folded/unfolded it about a million times and rolled it 10+ miles down the streets of Chicago and onto dozens of trains, buses and subways.

OK, on to the trip…..

Day 1:  Travel + Cubs game

Beckett's first flight.  Very early flight = baby in pjs :)

Wrigley Field!

 

Day 2:  Aquarium + Wheaton

Chicago has a great aquarium.  I think it was Beckett's highlight of the trip.

We took the train out to Wheaton, Kolby's Alma Mater.  Kolby had such a fun time showing Beckett all around the beautiful campus, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

We met up with six of Kolby's best friends from college-- who happen to live in the area-- for a long dinner and ice cream.  It was such a fun evening, but I don't have any pictures.

Day 3:  Sears Tower + Lincoln Park/Zoo + Gino’s East Pizza + John Hancock Observatory

Sears Tower now has these lookouts on the 103rd floor that stick out 4 ft from the building and have glass on all sides, including the floor.  Beckett had no idea there was anything different about it, but it was a cool experience that we'll get to tell him about when he's older and can show him these fun pictures!

 (All the sunlight really shows how reddish his hair is, huh?)

Here's a street view of the Sears Tower and at the very top you can barely see the four lookouts sticking out. 

We spent midday at the free zoo at Lincoln Park, but I guess I didn't get any pictures.

For almost all of our meals we just grabbed take-out and ate in the hotel room while Beckett napped/slept, but we did manage a fun family dinner at Gino's East pizza on the Magnificent Mile.  The pizza was awesome and Beckett was a champ (thanks mostly  to a big screen tv) and we all had a great time.

We ended the day by going to the top of the John Hancock Building for a night view of the city.  Apparently I don't have the skills to take a skyline picture at night.  This cell phone shot of Beckett is the best I could do.  His zoned out look is courtesy of it being almost 3 hours past his bedtime.

Day 4:  Playtime at the hotel + The Bean + Travel

The king-size hotel bed may have been the best part of the whole trip for this guy.

We visited Millennium Park, which is famous for a sculpture called Cloud Gate, better known as "The Bean."

I was SO SAD it was already time for the trip to be over.  But after being in the 70s all week (GLORIOUS!) it got really hot on our last day, plus it was the opening day of a huge rock concert right across from our hotel so there were thousands of cool people everywhere--not really our crowd (side note: mom jeans and 80s clothes are back in?!?)-- so it was good timing for heading home.

I am so thankful that we had such a successful first family vacation.  Chicago was the perfect destination for us, and it was very nostalgic to be back in the same city and doing the same things that Kolby and I used to do when I visited him at college.  It was actually in Chicago 8.5 years ago that I knew I would marry Kolby (we weren't technically even dating at the time).  Would never have guessed that we'd be back there so many years later, happily married and with our precious bouncing baby boy in tow!

Photo Shoot

I realized I hadn't taken pictures of Beckett with my nice camera in awhile, so we had a little photo shoot the other day.  Here are some (ok, a lot) of my favorite shots of Beckett at 7.5 months old!

 

Seven Months Old

(The quality of these pictures is going downhill as Beckett becomes more mobile. He crawled off the chair twice, Kolby (barely) catching him both times. We'll take what we can get!)

Well just about as soon as I decided that I’m going to embrace Beckett growing up, I have to eat my words.  My baby grew up too much for me this month.  He changed more in just a couple weeks than he had in the past couple months.  The big thing is that he’s gotten so active that he doesn’t want to sit still with us anymore.  Y’all... it breaks my heart.  He’s squirmy in our laps now and just wants to get on the floor and play and move.  At church we had to start dropping him off in the nursery during the sermon.  I feel like it’s the ending of an era (overdramatic, much?). 

On the bright side, he’s laughing a lot more now and learned this fun “trick” where if you shake your head at him he’ll shake his head back, usually accompanied by a silly scream.  He’s getting more interactive every day and it’s a ton of fun.  But the independence he’s developing—it’s not my favorite.

He’s still Grabby McGrabberson.  I’m constantly having to adjust because every day it seems he can reach further and faster and knock something onto the floor, get something that’s not his, etc.  Kolby and I joke that we could set 10 things in front of him and he would grab the one thing that does not belong to him.  It’s so funny how he’ll look right past a pile of his toys (even new, fun ones) and go for the shoe, phone, remote, etc.  We had a little honeymoon phase when he learned to sit up on his own, where we could eat dinner or sit and chat with someone and it was super easy because he would just sit on our laps and be totally content.  Now he’s lunging for anything within eyesight and gets frustrated if he can’t have it.

A big new thing this month is food!  We gave Beckett his first solid food a couple days after his six-month birthday.  We started with pureed avocado, then moved on to pureed peas, then gave him some hard-boiled egg yolk (which he LOVED), then pureed green beans.  He’s learning quickly what this eating thing is all about, and seems to enjoy everything he’s tried so far.  Our doctor suggested starting with green veggies then moving on to orange/yellow veggies, then fruit.  So next on the menu was sweet potatoes and roasted yellow bell peppers, and he also tried banana (and ate half a banana in one sitting!).  He still gets all his sustenance from breastmilk; the solids at this point are just to help him learn how to eat food and also provide some extra vitamins and minerals. 

Also, Beckett is now rolling over!  He took his time deciding it was worth it, but he now rolls over when he wants to, usually back to front.  He scoots a little bit too, mostly backwards, and he can turn (counterclockwise only!).  He’s also gotten a lot more consistent lately with liking to stand.  For the longest time he had no interest in locking his legs.  And just this past week he learned how to maneuver from sitting to lying on his belly.

His sleeping isn’t much changed from my last update.  He typically sleeps from 9pm-6am, although it’s still not uncommon for him to wake up closer to 5 or 5:30am, and every now and then he’ll wake up once in the middle of the night.  We’re happy with his sleeping and are all enjoying the full night of rest!

He naps from about 7:30-9am, again for another hour or so around lunch, and usually a shorter nap later in the afternoon.  He seems to have become more sensitive to getting tired now—if he’s been awake for too long and gets bored he’ll sometimes start to get a little fussy, whereas “fussy” wasn’t really in our vocabulary the past couple of months.  He also protests loudly now when he’s hungry and I set him down while I get ready to nurse him.  Just in the half a minute it takes for me to get a glass of water he’ll break out into this really high-pitched whiny cry.  Apparently when it’s time to eat, it’s time to eat!

Things we did this month:

-Beckett tried food for the first time

-Celebrated Kolby’s first Father’s Day

-Beckett laughed REALLY hard at Kolby tossing a ball in the air and catching it

-Had a play date with Maximilian, Collin, and Declan

-Swam at Chip & Sherry’s house and at Becky’s house

-Spent a long weekend in Wimberley with Poppa and CeeCee

-Beckett’s first trip to the river in Wimberley

-Visited Gran and Daddy Monk in Athens, TX

-Splashed around in our tiny inflatable pool

-Had lunch with Mimi and Grandfather at their community center

-Celebrated July 4^th with Brad/Remy/cousin Tucker and Chris/Ashley/cousin Liam

Things Beckett loves:

-Loves grabbing his feet and holding on to them, especially during diaper changes or in his car seat

-Rolling over

-When Kolby tries to make him laugh

-Standing

-Looking at Maya

-Playing with other kids and babies

-Being tickled

-Tags—he LOVES to play with and suck on the tags of his toys, bibs, etc.

Things I love about Beckett:

-How easy it is to make him smile

-How precious his smile is (and how gummy it is… not sure how long that will last!)

-His hair getting longer

-Swimming with him

-I feel like I’ve hit a really good groove with nursing him—I’ve always loved it so much, but now that he goes longer between feedings (4 hours) we can do more things without me having to game plan where I can find a spot to feed him.  And it’s been a long time since I’ve thought, “Man, it’s time to feed him AGAIN?!?” (moms of young babies, you know what I mean!) or been inconvenienced at all by the logistics of being a nursing mom.

-His sweet and silly sounds