Eight Months!

It’s been fun this month to really see Hannah’s brain at work!  I love the way she grabs anything within her reach, picks it up, rotates it, studies it, feels it, claps it between her hands, and talks about it.  She particularly loves paper products.  The reason we can let her play with a straw wrapper, tortilla chip, or crayon baggie?  She doesn’t stick a thing in her mouth.  I thought all babies explored with their mouths.  Maybe she’s just not at that stage yet, but she lets her fingers do all of the work.  I love how she’s fascinated by the simplest things.

Hannah’s “words” now have consonants at the beginning of them.  She loves to say “da, da, da, da” and her da-da loves to hear it!  I’ve heard “ma” a time or two.  We sign up, eat, all done, bath, mom, and dad to her.  She knows the sign for up and gets very excited and puts her arms out to the side when we use it.  Daniel and I have each heard her say the word “up” at an appropriate time.  She also uses “uh oh” correctly on occasion.

When I pick Hannah up, she feels so big!  I think the solids have been adding weight to her.  I no longer tote her around in her car seat.  That got way too heavy.  Especially since she sits up for long periods of time, we now use high chairs in restaurants and put her in the cart at the store.  She’ll eat anything Gerber packages, minus meat, green veggies, and prunes.  My attempts at making food didn’t cut it for Hannah.  She isn’t a messy eater.  The mess is usually one I create by getting too much food on the spoon.  Speaking of messes, it’s been a long time since we’ve used Oxyclean for the down below dirties.  That seems to have stopped shortly after solids were introduced.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Hannah gets great pleasure out of splashing around in her bath, sitting on her car, giving Hannah hugs, and watching Daddy walk in the door after a day of work.  She loves rolling back and forth in her crib and playing with her stuffed animals and mirror. 

This month wasn’t all fun and games.  On Monday, June 27^th, something clicked and Hannah decided she didn’t like bedtime.  For a week, I coddled her, rocked her, read to her, gave her Tylenol, even fed her to sleep and unsuccessfully snuck her into bed, and eventually slept with her.  After doing this for a week, including through the trip to Nashville, I stopped making excuses for her and decided to use the CIO method--parent lingo for “cry it out.”  Now, this new bedtime dilemma also coincides with Hannah’s general dislike for being left alone.  She prefers for you to be right by her side, or she’ll whine.  A lot.  Then start to cry.  That’s why my house is messy, but I digress.  The first night, Hannah CIOed for 20 mins.  Not too bad, but still heartbreaking.  The second night was even longer.  Forty minutes.  The third night….what?  Hannah’s a quick learner!  That’s right…no more crying.  Back to bed without fuss at 7:30!  That’s not to say all’s been perfect.  Another week of travel and some teething made for a few middle of the night wake up calls, but nothing serious.  I have my perfect sleeper back!  And averaging 2.5 to 3 hour naps now!  Woo hoo!  But don’t expect my house to be clean.

We did have to make our first “sick” visit to the doctor this month.  Hannah started making a sound like she was gasping for air.  Her face would remain calm, as if it didn’t affect her at all, but it scared us.  It was just an occasional thing, usually when she got excited, but also happened once in her sleep that I know of.  Even though I didn’t think it was anything, I know I needed to do my due diligence and take her to the doctor.  Turns out every baby’s wind pipe take a while to develop and hers just happens to make sounds while it matures.  Dr. G. encouraged us to not react to this sound as she was getting attention from doing it.  Bedtime blues, no independent play, sounds to attract attention…sounds like a form of separation anxiety to me!  The sounds have completely stopped.  Hannah’s pretty trainable!