A Family of Gingers: Timothy's Eighth Month

Hello Wonder Week, Leap 6! Timothy has just hit this wonder week (although why they call it that when it's multiple weeks long is beyond me) and has been more grumpy, clingy, easily upset and finicky about sleeping and eating. Yay. Can't wait until this is over and he's mastered the mental leap of categorizing his world!

He did pop out that fourth tooth just a few days after my last post, so he has both bottom teeth and both top teeth now. And, just a few days ago, so technically not in his 8th month (since I'm late with this post, oh well!) he cut his 5th tooth, the top one next to his middle right.

He will scarf down practically any food we give him, and has mastered the pincer grasp (thumb and forefinger) so that he can pick up smaller food items easily, which makes him a baby-led-weaning-style advanced eater! He has actually eaten so much a couple of times that he wasn't ready for his milk feed when he should have been, so we had to cut back a little on food. Milk is still supposed to be his primary source of nutrition, although by the end of this month it'll be time to let real food start gradually taking over.

We are super excited about the EC success! He had a 2 week streak where he pooped on the potty every day for us! There were a couple of days where he apparently hadn't quite finished (or just came up with more later), once I caught him and took him to the potty again, and once we had to clean out a poopy diaper. But one poopy diaper to deal with in 2 weeks is fantastic! He's also eating enough solids now that his poop is more of the "plop-able" kind rather than the "peanut butter smushed onto every square inch of the diaper" kind. We also had several naps where he woke up with a dry diaper and peed on the potty. I like getting to put dry diapers back on!

He's still scooting around most of the time. There have been a couple of very short really almost-crawling events where he gets up on hands and knees, and does one hand, one knee, other hand, other knee.... but then flops onto his tummy and goes back to scooting. He's so fast at scooting, he doesn't seem to want to put in the effort to learn to crawl. Climbing over and climbing onto things is his new obsession, and he's definitely getting close to pulling up. I tried to make a pillow barricade to block him off escaping the living room, but he just climbed right over!

I'm trying to get back into signing to him more regularly now, since he's going through a mental leap, maybe this will be when it will click. It's just been really boring since he doesn't seem to be interested, or making any attempts to sign back. I've been sticking with my original "milk," "more" and "all done" as the ones I try to do, but maybe I should learn some more and just sign as much as possible, then he could choose the ones he finds more interesting. Apparently "ceiling fan" is a fun one for some babies' first signing back!

His favorite vocal sound now appears to be mix of his fake cough with a little "ah!" so it's a little loud and shrill. I'm calling it cackling. It's like "cAHck, cAHck, cAHck!" We've been trying to capture video evidence, but haven't quite succeeded yet.

We had two trips down to the beach this month! The first was for the wedding of two friends, and we stayed at a very comfy, nice AirBnB in Wilmington with Timothy's uncle, aunt and cousin Edison, so that was very exciting!

Timothy is finally getting old enough that he and Edison can kinda play together, and Edison loves giving Timothy hugs, which is adorable.

We had time Saturday morning before the wedding for a little beach trip!

Goofy faces before the wedding started... we wasted all our cooperativeness before the wedding, and ended up missing most of it entertaining His Antsy-ness in the lobby.

During our beach trip with my family, he became obsessed with my hair, I think it's his security "blanket" now. He also insists on having a fistful during nursing, or he won't cooperate, just bites and squirms until I take my hair down and let him play with it. Sometimes he actually plays with it gently, but he also likes to yank.