Today, Cody turned eight months old! He’s two-thirds of the way to being a year old— my little baby, growing so fast.
This month, Cody has started growing into his personality more and more. He’s a very strong-willed, curious, silly, active, sweet little boy. He’s already a big handful, and I can only imagine what he’s going to be like as a toddler!
Cody’s favorite activities are walking around while holding our hands, exploring the house and everything in it, and using everything he possibly can to try to pull himself up if he’s not already standing. He will sit and play with toys for a few minutes, but usually tries to find a way to move around before too long. Often he ends up on his belly, pulling himself around in circles, or balanced on hands and feet with his butt up in the air. He has not discovered the magical powers of crawling yet, and he can’t walk on his own, but he absolutely loves to be on the move—which means a lot of bent-over-walking for me and Cory. When that gets to be too much, we use his walking harness—which looks like kind of like puppet strings, and Cody doesn’t like very much—or his baby sling wrapped around his chest and behind his arms to support him.
I discovered that rubber-soled shoes are supposedly not good for infants’ foot and bone development or walking skills, so we recently bought him a pair of baby moccasins, which have a soft leather sole that mimics barefoot walking. They’re also ridiculously cute! We use those when he’s walking on dirty, pokey, or hot surfaces (such as outdoors, on woodchips, or on sun-baked cement), but we also let him go barefoot a lot. He sweats so much at night and when he’s exerting himself that we’ve started to give him a bath each night, so his feet get clean before he gets in our bed anyway.
Since he’s really starting to get into everything, we finally baby-proofed the house. We didn’t go crazy and bubble-wrap everything, but we did do some of the important basics like outlet covers, coffee table corner bumpers, cabinet latches for under the sink, and baby gates in key places. Now he can freely explore the house without us having to constantly redirect him away from dangerous areas.
Cody’s still exclusively breastfeeding. He has tasted several types of food, but hasn’t liked anything enough to actually eat it in earnest. However, he does enjoy smearing it all over the place and playing with the utensils. So far, the puree that has been the most successful is peaches—purees of sweet potato, red potatoes, apples, and rice cereal have not been appreciated by our little connoisseur, and anything more solid than that is met with full-on gagging and choking until we kindly remove it from his mouth. Fortunately, although solid foods are customarily started around 6 months in our culture, they actually aren’t necessary at all until at least one year of age. Cody’s thriving on breastmilk, so I’m not concerned. He’ll start eating solids when he’s good and ready! 😉
His sleeping habits are somewhat more consistent now, but unfortunately not improving in any other way. He takes two naps each day, once in the mid-morning for about 45 minutes to an hour and another in the early afternoon for about two hours, although they can vary significantly. He takes all of his naps in his swing, after nursing. He goes to bed around 8:30, although sometimes as early as 7:00 and other times as late as 9:30. He wakes up on average 5 times per night to nurse, and I’d estimate that about 75% of nights he won’t fall back asleep after nursing at least one of those times and has to go back in his swing to sleep. Some nights are unusually good, and he only wakes up 3 or 4 times and sleeps in the bed all night—other nights are so bad as to be almost humorous. We had a night a few weeks ago in which he woke up no less than a dozen times before I lost count, about every half hour. Needless to say, our biggest prayer for Cody right now besides his continued health and protection is for him to start sleeping better at night.
Teething is still the bane of our existence, but fortunately it isn’t a constant problem anymore. He is a sensitive and oftentimes grumpy baby, but when he’s at home he spends a good portion of the day just being happy and curious. We know he’s going through a tough teething period when he starts crying at random and clutches at his mouth. We treat it with homeopathic teething medicines in the form of gel, tablets, and liquid capsules, as well as giving him cold teething toys from the freezer or fridge. If he’s still in pain and nothing else is working, we give him infant ibuprofen, but that’s rarely necessary. At this point, he has his two front teeth on top and bottom, and two more just starting to come in on top.
The most exciting development this month for me happened just a few days ago, though. Cody’s been babbling a lot lately (his favorite sound has been ba-ba-ba-ba-ba…) and we’ve been trying to get him to say “mama” or “dada.” Well, the other day, we were in the car and I was saying “mama” at him and he was carefully watching my mouth when all of a sudden he said it! Not “ma-ma-ma-ma-ma…” but a very clear “mama.” His first word!!! He said it once again after that, and a couple times since then. It’s by far the best word I’ve ever heard spoken. Now we just have to get him to understand what it means, and teach him “dada” as well! It’s very exciting for us. =D
So that’s pretty much all of Cody’s developments this month. Now on to the next month… our little love-bug is growing into such a goofy, wild little boy, and it’s a blast to watch. I’m hoping by nine months, he’ll be walking on his own or at least crawling! And with any luck, sleeping at night, too. 😉
