Gwen: eight months

Gwen, you’re eight months old, and you’re turning into a little person. You hit so many milestones this month that I’m not sure where to start, except with the obvious: you and I went overseas for most of your seventh month and visited your grandparents in Arizona.  They met you in Auckland in March, but they’ve gotten to see you again and we were all amazed at how much you’ve developed in only a few months.

on our way (on Flickr)

Traveling with you for so long was very hard.  You are a great sleeper when you’re lying down and in a familiar place, but you didn’t like having to sleep in my arms on our domestic flights.  You refused to sleep while we were waiting for our first connecting flight.  We had poor travel experiences on the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, but the flights back home to Daddy were much more manageable.

You got much better at three major things while we were away:

You’re crawling!  Before we left, you were doing a commando shuffle where you pulled yourself forward on your arms, but now you’re moving around a lot on your hands and knees.  I can put you down in the lounge (newly fortified with a barrier) and you’ll still end up going out the other, open door and crawling down the hall.

Mealtimes are quicker and you eat a lot more (and more varied) food.  Your appetite took a huge jump while we were in Arizona and we started to cut out the late evening dreamfeed.  You’re making up for those night calories by eating lots and lots of solid foods, and there’s almost nothing that you don’t like to eat.

broccoli FTW (on Flickr)

In the last few days before we came back to Auckland, you started making some consonant sounds.  You’re pretty good at “da” now, though you don’t know (or can’t tell us) what it means yet.  Of course this has made your father very happy as he can now catch you saying “da da da”.  ”Ma” seems to be far off.  ”Ba” is frequently heard…and your dad keeps trying to get you to say “paleontologist”.

KITTY! (on Flickr)

You’ve also become adept at feeding yourself with finger foods, like Marmite sandwiches and pieces of fruit.  Most of the time I feel like I am constantly involved in feeding you: I’m either doing the feeding, cooking something for you to eat, or thinking of what I can feed you.  There isn’t much of a respite, except that now I can plonk you into the highchair with some finger foods and you’ll amuse yourself for many minutes.

Marmite sandwich (on Flickr)

Today I looked back at videos we took just after you were born, and I am floored by how much you’ve grown and developed (and begun to look like a person rather than a teeny newborn baby).  Keep up the good work!  I bet you’ll be pulling yourself up to standing very soon.