March 2, 2009

Eight Months

Señorita Clementina,

On January 29th, you turned eight months old. Yup, I'm late again. Welcome to life; things are never perfect.

You spent the first eighteen days of January being sick. One would think this means that I don't have very much to write about this go around, but boy is that far from the truth. You change too much in these early months for me to ever have only a little bit to write about. Plus, I want to remember all of the little things you do from month to month, which makes for a rather long list.

One good result of your illness, besides the fact that you now have some immune defenses built up, is that you became a napper. No worries about that, my dear as you have already begun to worm yourself away from it, but for the month or so that you did it, boy was it great. You would get up in the morning and wear yourself out playing and then into the swing you'd go to have a quick chat with your fishes and a short snooze-a-roo. Then you'd be up for a bite to eat and some more action. Around 1:00 you'd go back down for a longer nap, wake up and eat, then go for a walk with your chompy-lones in the early evening, eat some more, and go to bed!

What's that? A schedule!

As I said, you are quickly ridding yourself of such things, but hey - that's life too I suppose.

You didn't eat too much the first part of the month. I don't blame you; who has time to eat when they are busy trying to breathe? You began to eat more the last part of the month. You quite enjoy the peas and you inhale bananas. Your mouth is open for both before I can get the food up there. This is very encouraging since you took quite awhile warming up to the food-eating process.


We have spoken before about the fact that you were taking your sweet time on the tooth front, and this month you have finally broken through. I mentioned that your teeth were playing the drama queen and were waiting for a special event to reveal themselves; this event just happened to be the Presidential Inauguration. Oh, yes. The day after was your day to shine! You got the bottom center left tooth first, followed one week later by the bottom center right tooth. Two days after that you got an upper right tooth.

We can already tell that you are a non-conformist as that top right tooth is not the center one, but one to the right of that. Oh, yes. And you only have three thus far; so much for teeth coming in pairs.

In order to soothe your gum you chewed on your exer-saucer quite a bit. Usually you chose the apple in the photo above, but occasionally the platform on the bottom was good enough although apparently you do not want to be caught doing so:


Another major development this month is that you reach for things all the time. You finally figured out how to grab the dangling toys on your exer-saucer, you are constantly reaching for and grabbing faces, and then there's your favorite thing to reach for:


That's right, you love your doggy. You haven't quite figured out how to play with him yet, but his movements absolutely delight you:


Speaking of delight, you are a pretty happy little girl. You only fuss when things are wrong these days, and you are starting to entertain yourself, which is a relief for me.


You are becoming more mobile by way of rolling and scooting. The scoot is normally about half a scoot and then you roll. It takes you absolutely forever to get to most things, but you set your sights on them and are a determined little one; you always figure out a way to get there.

You have also begun a new sound this month, that of happy squealing. It isn't very loud, and definitely nowhere near a screech, but a little high-pitched squeal it is. You are so very funny when you get excited and make these noises because you are obviously very happy about it:


You began the month with a new face. You would stick your tongue out and curve it up towards your nose and talk. You did it almost exclusively for a couple of weeks, and then you were done.

One activity you are not done with is that of sucking your fingers. You suck them when you are hungry, bored, tired, or just need soothing.


You discovered textures this month. You roll/scoot over to things and proceed to touch them, smack at them, grab them, pull them, and basically see what you can make them do. This includes things like your hat:


You love all of the pieces on the floor of your play mat that flap and crinkle and move. Included in this list is the tag on the play mat and any other toy you can get your hands on. You chew on the tags every chance you get. Also? The straps on your car seat and stroller. Oh, yes. Tags and straps. Who knew?


I started teaching you to drum on things this month, mostly the desk where we talk on the web cam. I am hoping you will soon transfer this to the drum you received at Christmas. You love it when we help you drum the table as quickly as we can. Way fun indeed.

You still put your hands together and squeeze. You've done this since you were born (you came out doing it, in fact) and you delight in it. You do it when you eat, when you're falling asleep, when you wake up and when you're happy.


Basically you'll do it any old time and it is definitely one of my favorites.

Love,
Mom

1 comment:

Brianne said...

Wow! Three teeth?!?! Congrats!