The eighth month

Dear E.,

This month has been full of adventures! You are two-thirds of the way through your first year, and even though I don’t think you look all that different from your photos of a few months ago (you’ve always had a very expressive face, and a particular look that is your very own), the way you interact with us and the world around you has changed dramatically. I find myself writing notes in your  journal nearly every day now, as it seems each morning brings with it something else that you’ve learned to do.

Last month you were so pleased to be able to sit up and play with your toys on the carpet in the living room or on the mat in the kitchen. Your Daddy and I really noticed (and appreciated!) the increase in your independence. This month you decided that sitting upright was boring. You, my son, are ready to move! You still aren’t quite crawling, but you are very very close- so close, in fact, that your Daddy and I will be baby-proofing the house in the next day or so. I think you’re going to skip any army crawling or creeping and go straight to hands and knees. It all started about the middle of the month, when we discovered that if you were on your tummy on the hardwood floor in the kitchen you could push yourself around, which made you very excited. The only problem was you always went backwards! Soon you were trying to get onto your hands and knees, and when sitting you started wriggling around, trying to get into the right position. Right now you can push yourself up to sitting from your tummy, get onto your hands and knees from sitting (where you either get your left leg stuck behind your right knee, or you end up rocking back and forth on your hands and knees) or from your tummy, and even get onto your hands and feet, with your legs straight, like a monkey. Now I can’t expect you to be in the same place as where I left you, as you will wriggle around on your bottom, or drop onto your tummy and then either roll or push backwards to where you want to be. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last week or so moving you away from the cat bowls, the water dish, the houseplants, the magazines on the bookshelf, etc. Your Daddy and I regularly look at you, trying so hard to get moving, and say to each other that life as we know it is about to end!

This was the month that solid food finally became fun rather than a source of stress. Your tummy is much better, thanks to our obsessive label reading, and so we’ve been able to explore all sorts of tasty things. We’ve stopped waiting three days before introducing any new food, as you’ve coped so well with everything and haven’t shown any signs of allergies or tummy upsets. Thus far you’ve tried avocado, carrot, eggplant, apple, pear, chicken, turkey, red pepper, salmon, tuna, egg, pasta, green beans, broccoli, banana, oatmeal, sweet potato, potato, butternut squash, orange, cantaloupe, cucumber, strawberries, and blueberries. You absolutely love cucumber and eggplant, and you make a beeline for anything orange on your tray. This always makes me laugh, as apparently when I was little I went through a phase of only eating orange foods- so much so that the tip of my nose took on an orange hue! So I guess it’s not surprising you can’t get enough of sweet potato, butternut squash, carrots, and orange slices. We’ve continued to take a baby-led weaning approach, so everything is put on your tray as a finger food, and it’s up to you how much you eat and what you choose. You get offered food at breakfast and lunch now, and we’re really impressed with how dextrous you are, and how quickly you’ve learned to pick things up (even slippery foods) and get them in your mouth. You can adjust your grip according to the texture and softness of a particular food, and you often use your second hand to help guide the food to your mouth. You have really mastered the art of chewing this month, even though you only have your four front teeth, and you almost never gag. It’s not an exaggeration to say that you love your food- you start reaching for whatever we’ve put together even before it’s on your tray, and you will often show your Daddy and I what you’re eating and chat about it in between bites. The appreciative noises you make when it’s something particularly tasty (like pear) always make us laugh. It’s easy to tell, too, when you’re done with eating- you start mashing the food on your tray rather than trying to put it in your mouth, or you’ll drop it over the side (which you almost never do when you’re actually interested- you are such a careful eater and astonishingly tidy) or you’ll try to pull your bib over your head.

I think my fondest memory of this month is of the three of us sitting together for our first Christmas lunch- just our little family- and watching you demolish the roasted carrots, sweet potato and butternut squash, and the baked salmon that we put on your tray. You had the same meal that we did, and it was exactly what I had hoped for when we took the baby-led weaning approach, and when I imagined our first Christmas together.

Physically you look quite different this month. You didn’t have a doctor’s appointment, so we’re not sure what you weigh, but you definitely look like you’ve chunked back out when we look at your wrists and your thighs and your cute little buddha belly. It could just be you’re about to have another growth spurt, but I also wonder if finally getting the MSPI issue under control has helped your weight gain. You’re certainly taking in a lot of breastmilk- I’m still eating as much as your Daddy at meals, along with frequent snacks, and yet I can’t keep the weight on (the only exception to this was over Christmas when I worked very hard to eat all the MSPI-friendly cookies your Grannie baked). Your relatives bought you quite a few 12-month onesies for Christmas, all of which fit you already, and the 12-month pants are only just slightly too long. Your hair continues to stick straight up at the back, and we love the gap between your two top front teeth (although we’re less enamored of your new habit of grinding your four teeth together- it makes a horrid noise and we very much hope this will be a short phase).

You figured out how to do so many things this month. At the start of the month you began reaching into your shape sorter (still your favourite toy) and pulling out individual pieces, rather than just tipping it upside down to get them all out like you normally did. My friend Michelle brought you a great toy (which your Daddy has christened the ‘brainless elephant’) and it only took you a couple of sessions of watching us drop in the balls before you could do it. At your Grannie’s over Christmas you mastered in one morning pulling a string hand-over-hand to bring a toy close enough to grab. You have perfected a fake cough, and you’re starting to wave ‘bye-bye’ when prompted, although you’re still a bit unsure about this. When people come in the front door and say hello, and then pop back behind the wall to take off their shoes, you will twist your body and crane your head to see where they’ve gone. Your pincer grip allows you to pick up puffed millet pieces from your highchair tray, and to poke at various bits of my anatomy, although thankfully you’re not yet interested in the fluff on the carpet.

Best of all, on the very first day of the new year, you started babbling. For a couple of days previously you were beginning to babble when you were sucking on your fingers while settling for a nap, but on the first of January, it was a mini language explosion. You’ve definitely got ‘ba’, ‘ga’, ‘da’ and ‘ma’, although you are still very fond of the occasionally R2D2 impression or the shrieking that reminds me of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

One of the big events of this month was your first Christmas. To say that I was excited would be quite the understatement! You didn’t really have much sense of what it all meant, but you enjoyed trying to open your presents (managing on two occasions to eat quite a lot of wrapping paper without us noticing), and, as I’ve already mentioned, Christmas lunch was a big hit. On Christmas Eve we went to a family mass, and although you were very overtired (having refused to nap that afternoon), you were your usual cheerful self once we left the house, and you spent most of the service smiling at anyone who made eye contact. You absolutely loved the week after Christmas when we visited your grandparents and aunts- you’re still not a great traveller in the car, but that was the only negative part of the trip (that, and the one horrible night when it became clear that I’d eaten something that wasn’t MSPI safe and you were in pain). You were spoiled, but not too much, and you managed to keep to your usual nighttime and nap routines even with the hustle and bustle and changing of households. There’s still not much sign of stranger anxiety, although you always look around for your Daddy or I when playing, and you will grizzle and fuss if both of us leave the room. You also tend to start to cry and fuss the moment I walk into a room, even when you’ve been happily playing with your Daddy and your Grandpa for an hour beforehand, and only a cuddle with Mummy will bring out the smiles again (secretly your Mummy loves that she gets this reaction). You currently have your paternal Granny visiting, who is just as besotted with you as your Canadian relatives, and we’re very aware that you’re going to be most unimpressed when she leaves later this month, and you realize that it’s just boring old Mummy and Daddy again after a solid month of endless friends and relatives wanting to play with and entertain you.

There haven’t been many changes in your daily routine. You still take either two or three naps, depending on how long the first two are, and it’s anyone’s guess whether you’re going to sleep for thirty minutes or two hours (most naps are either forty-five minutes or a bit over an hour). You still wake up consistently twice a night to feed, usually around 11 or midnight and then again somewhere between 4 and 5, but lately you’ve added all sorts of random pop-ups early in the evening, sometimes even within the first hour after you’ve gone down, and often your Daddy has to settle you a couple of times right after we go to bed. I certainly wouldn’t say that there’s been any improvements in your nighttime sleep this month, and the haze of sleep deprivation continues to hang over your Daddy and I, although you always seem to be bright-eyed and ready to go in the morning, even after your worst nights. What I do find completely adorable is that you’ve developed a habit of holding on to my forearm with your left hand (you usually have your right thumb in your mouth) as you fall asleep. I’m not sure if you like the feel of my skin, or if you’re just looking for a bit more reassurance as you drift off, but it melts my heart every time you reach out for me.

Your Daddy and I continue to marvel at the little person that you’re becoming. You are so happy, so engaged with the world, such a ham- you revel being the centre of attention. You are so precise in the way you use your hands to eat, or to play with toys, or just in the way you study your fingers. When we see you sitting by yourself in the tub, or standing alone holding on to the couch, it seems like years ago you were our tiny newborn. We regularly find ourselves saying things like, “Do you remember when during baby naked time all he could do was lie on his back and flail and it was a big deal when he found his toes?” while watching you flip and twist and wriggle. We love watching you make sense of your world. You are rapidly moving away from babyhood towards the toddler years and beyond, and so I find myself in the wee hours of the night treasuring the quiet moments where it is just the two of us in the rocking chair, and you curl your body up against my chest, and tuck your head under my chin, and I can nuzzle your hair and kiss your head and breathe in your gorgeous baby smell and listen to the rhythm of your breathing and feel the quiet rise and fall of your chest as you sleep, safe and secure. You are loved, my son, so very very much.

Love always,
Mummy

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