The Story of Us: Abigail is 8 months old!

Look closely! You can see her two bottom teeth!

Today marks the 8 month anniversary of our little one's arrival. According to my measurements, Abigail is 27.5" long, 18.8 pounds, and has a head circumference of 18.25" (ish - it was hard to tell because she squirmed!). She wears size 3 diapers and shoes, although she hardly wears shoes - or socks! - for very long. Depending on the brand, she wears 6-9 months, 6-12 months or just plain ol' 12 month clothes. Many of her 6-9 month clothes are getting too small. In the case of rompers or some of the such, her torso is too long for it to snap!

She goes to bed around 8 pm and gets up in the morning about 7:30 or 8 am. She usually wakes up between 3-4 am for a bottle, but lately she has been waking up at about 11pm also. It's new to us and we don't like it! I think it is because she has a wet diaper, because usually she will just get a diaper change and go back to sleep. She really hates being wet! She has two teeth, bottom center, and it feels like the top two are getting close. Of course, it took months for the bottom two to come in, even after we said it looked "close."

She loves food, especially Gerber puffs. This past month, she tried mashed potatoes, various beans, saltine crackers, dry cheerios and a few bites of other table foods. She started eating diced soft fruits and I think I may do the same for vegetables soon. She's on stage 2 foods and loves most of the fruits. She's even starting to come around to peas and green beans! We just tried giving her pureed chicken a week or so ago, and she HATES it. Every bite would make her gag. It's kind of funny to see a baby have such a strong preference. She will eat it, however, if we mix it with sweet potatoes.

I am really amazed with her development. I already mentioned how she moves in a previous post, but now (started today) when she stands up holding on to something, she is getting brave and letting go to reach for a toy. Scary! I have to fight my urge to make her hold on while I hand her the toy. Not much progress on crawling since that post last week, but she does get on all fours and rock quite a bit more often. When she is sitting, she will reach for toys and almost put herself in the crawling position. One noticeable change from last month is the amount of time she spends on the floor and on her tummy. She used to HATE being on her tummy, but now she will stay that way and scoot (backwards, or in circles) for 10-15 minutes at a time. Mind you, that is accompanied time. She is not much for playing by herself. I wonder sometimes is she will crawl or walk first. She can walk pretty well when holding on to my hands - when she wants to. She did yesterday at the Little Gym, and the teacher was impressed. :) It's give and take on any given day. Oh - and she FINALLY rolled over back to front on July 3rd. Whoo! Also, if she drops something, she looks for it, and I think that is amazing. Funny how object permanence develops.

As far as language goes, she is quite the copy cat. Robby once said to her, "Say, 'Hi, Dada'" and guess what? She actually said it! She did it several times because I kept telling Robby it didn't count. After the third time, though, I had to admit she was doing it! And once I was going "Beep beep beep" and she copied me! Better watch what we say. The only new sound I've heard this month is the "p" sound -- and that was after a weekend of my dad saying "Say, 'Papa'" a billion times to her. I guess all that repetition had an effect! I have noticed that she jibbers in syllables now - not as many vowel single syllable sounds. Once while she was sitting in her crib playing with her baby dolls, she was jibbering away and would pick up one, say something, put it down and pick up another. It was cute and I caught a little bit of it on video! If she is mad at one of us she will just jibber and jibber and jibber. We can tell she is so mad and she really goes off on us, although we can't understand it. At this stage, it is cute. :)