Bringing Home Baby

Today Addison turned 8 months old. This is just crazy to me. How can she already be 8 months old? How can she be just 4 months from her first birthday? We haven't even known her 2 months but it feels like a lifetime. I just can't wrap my brain around it all. I'm going to try to do these snapshots of her at each month and then year as she gets older, more for my own sake than anyone else's. I realize this is ridiculously long. Who knew one could type so much about an 8 month old? So bear with me.....it's only one post a month :-P

Today she weighs 18 lbs and is 27.25 inches tall. This mean she hasn't grown much longer but has grown significantly heavier in the last few weeks.

One of Addison's "trademarks" is her odd contortionist abilities. She does some crazy things with her legs that have led us to repeatedly have her hips evaluated but we have been assured by three different doctors that all is well. She is just that flexible. It makes for lots of odd photos, freakish videos and interesting ways she attains milestones!

She has mastered the military crawl and rolls from front to back in both directions. She can get up onto all fours but doesn't have the muscle tone yet to crawl in a traditional way. She can get into a sitting position from her belly and can sit perfectly now, playing with toys in both hands for prolonged periods of time. We no longer hesitate before plunking her down alone on the floor in a sitting position although craning to turn around and see what is going on leads to at least one fall backward a day. As long as she doesn't land on something, she's fine. In fact, sometimes she giggles.

She likes to pull to a stand using our fingers but has yet to pull to a stand using anything else, although she tries and often gets onto her knees where she bounces happily. We think she is a daredevil. When set in a standing position in front of the couch, she likes to intentionally push herself away from it and practice free-standing or standing with one hand holding on - the look on her face is just priceless during these feats!! But the real fun is in falling down into my lap haphazardly which is just hilarious, apparently. I fear the day she does pull to stand on her own and tries this stunt without adult supervision! She is not yet cruising at all, even while holding our hands. She wants to (as is evident by her pitifully staring at her feet while trying to pick them up) but she just doesn't have the leg muscles yet to accomplish this goal. Recently she made her way off the carpeted livingroom and onto the hardwood dining room where she had so much fun pushing and scooting herself around on the slippery wood on her butt. It was hysterical.

Her real talent is in the "small motor" areas. She has long since mastered the pincher grasp and uses it constantly to pick up even the smallest of items off the ground....like a rogue loose staple or a microscopic sliver of wood tracked in from the garden. No amount of cleaning or vacuuming seems good enough to overcome her desire to seek out the microscopically small. In fact, she would prefer never to play with toys and to spend her free time exploring the house for stuff to choke on. This is much fun for us.

Recently Addison learned to clap in her uncoordinated non-sound-producing baby way. She is so proud and always says "ba ba ba" while she claps which Daddy swears is her rendition of "Patty Cake" - a rhyme she closely associates with clapping. She also learned to give kisses (my favorite), wave, do "high five" and, yesterday, she learned the ever-entertaining baby game of "share"....she gives you an item, you take it and give it right back. Back and forth, back and forth, for endless hours. She loves to turn pages, open things like cabinet doors, lids, etc. In other words, she uses her small motor skills to search out miniscule bits to choke on.

This is so different than my three boys and Tony's three kids. She is so inquisitive and so dexterous. She does put things in her mouth but is equally as likely to explore them with her fingers and try to figure out how they work. The other kids were all movement and sort of clumsy in the small motor areas. This is taking some major getting used to. We have already admitted we will have to really utilize all those child safety devices that we always wondered why they were produced at all. None of the other kids needed them!

She is babbling a lot these days. Her favorites are the aforementioned "baba" and my favorite, "mama". She does others as well but those are her favorites.

Sleep eludes her. She takes two good naps a day and it is so easy to get her to sleep. We turn on her lullaby, rock her for a few minutes and she is out cold. She transfers easily to the crib or our bed and sleeps for anywhere from a half hour to 2 hours depending on the nap. But nighttime is another story. She wakes often, crying and uncomfortable. A bottle will help but she can't take a bottle every hour or two. Sleeping with us seems to help sometimes and not others. She also wakes wet from her diaper - a consequence of being soothed by bottles. So we are working on a better solution and I think we are making some headway. Last night she slept 12 hours and only woke 3 times. This is definitely progress.

She still drinks 4-6 oz bottles during the day and still nurses a few times a day, for comfort. She still has no teeth at all and is still in pretty constant discomfort while she waits for the first to pop through. She loves to eat and this is a rough area for us because she's still too little for most foods we eat but she is absolutely obsessed with what we have. She literally salivates like Pavolv's dog when we eat in front of her and she has the saddest little dejected fact about it all. Offering her baby food is not enough to pacify her. I wish we could just give her what we eat but I am too worried about allergies and sensitivities. On Christmas, we did give her a tiny piece of Christmas cookie and, oh my goodness, the smile on her face made it clear that THAT was her real Christmas gift. I've never had a kid so obsessed with food before!

Speaking of which, her eczema has totally gone away. She still gets occasional red cheeks or dry areas but they go just as fast as they come. She has very sensitive skin, it scratches easily and shows even the lightest bump as a big red mark but it goes away within hours. Strange.

So that sums up 8 months! I hope her 8th month goes by a little more slowly than her 7th month did.