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 cra
wling
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...)
