8 Months Old

Mikaela is now 8 months old. She is very active and full of smiles.

- She crawls everywhere and pulls up on anything she can. When crawling on carpet, she crawls on her hands and knees. When crawling on tile or other hard surfaces, she does the "elephant walk."
- She weights 16.1 lbs and is probably about 26.5 to 27 inches long. We'll get more accurate measurements at her 9 month appointment. She is now in size 3 diapers.
- Her favorite toy is the dog toy. Go figure. But since that one is usually up out of reach, she likes her glow worm and the rings that she can shake around and chew.
- She has one tooth and we are pretty sure another is trying to break through because she is VERY cranky. She has become very clingy to Mommy.
- She now reaches out to Mommy and sometimes Daddy to be held. If others she knows (like Graem-ma or Aunt Amy) put their hands out, she will put her hands out to be held.
- She is experimenting with new sounds, like the "eh" sound and "g" and various combinations.
- She now has eaten peas, carrots, pears, banana, and rice. We will introduce sweet potato soon. So far, pears seem to be her favorite and carrots seem to be the least favorite.
- She is learning object permanence because she will peer around things looking for a person out of sight. It's pretty cute to watch her tilt her head to the side.
- We are introducing sign language to her (I know - go figure). She hasn't given any back yet, that I can tell, but we do eat, hungry, milk, bath, and water consistently. I tend to add in colors and other things when we are playing with toys in the bath tub or reading stories. She was very enthralled with my signing when she witnessed a conversation I was having (in sign) one day. She also gets very excited whenever we have Signing Time videos on.
- She sleeps an average of 2.5 hrs for naps during the day. On her best days she does an hour morning nap (between 10 and 11) and then a 2 hr afternoon nap (between 1:30 and 4). Typically it is 40 minute morning, 1.5/1.75 afternoon nap.
- She sleeps an average of 11.5 hrs a night, with the longest stretch of 7.5-8. She goes down (for good) around 7:30 -8. Lately it has taken a couple of tries to get her down without major fussing (again, I think teething is playing a role in this). She used to go down and sleep until 4 or 5am before waking to eat and go back to sleep until 7 or 8. Now she tends to wake between 10 and 11pm, eat, and then sleep until morning. Either schedule works for me, though I prefer the latter. The issue comes in that she "cries out" in her sleep. I don't think she ever wakes up long enough to do anything, but she'll fuss once, which wakes us up, but then goes back to sleep. So... we still really don't get a full night's rest because we still hear from her once a night, but we aren't necessarily having to go to her room to get her.

And that's what Mikaela is doing at 8 months.