8 Months!

December 29, 2010

Dear Riggins,

You are eight months old!  As I write, you are pulled up on the ottoman of my chair, checking in with the "mothership" after crawling around your new play mat and picking your toys up out of a basket.  It feels as though you gained all of these skills overnight, but it is truly amazing to watch how every little bit of progress builds upon itself to form a new ability that gives you even more independence.  And in spite of that independence, this month brought a bit of the famed stranger danger that all the books predict around this time.  You are constantly aware of my location these days, and you prefer to be as close as possible!  I know that some day I will beg to have you climb into my lap or cling to my legs, so I am savoring this stage of your life.  

At eight months, you weigh 20 pounds and are wearing size 6-9 month clothes and size 4 diapers.  You eat three solid meals a day and nurse five times a day.  The new addition this month has been finger foods, and you are crazy for Mum Mums, puffs, crunchies, Cheerios, and wagon wheels!  We have also let you start having little bites of things that we are eating; you even scarfed a sizable chunk of my dinner roll while we were on vacation in Franklin, TN!  You have become incredibly squirmy and distracted while nursing, which is a challenge.  In the sleep department, you take a one-hour morning nap, a two-hour afternoon nap, and you go to bed around 7:00.  Lately you have decided that you like to wake up before 6 a.m., which we are not crazy about!

You have so many new abilities!  At exactly 8 months you officially began to crawl.  You had been inch-worming on your belly all month, and you finally figured out how to get up on all fours and coordinate your legs and hands.  Halfway through the month, you began to pull up on anything and everything, so your crib is now lowered to the lowest setting.  After every nap or in the morning, there you are, standing straight up in your crib with a huge grin!  Unfortunately, you haven't quite figured out how to lay back down from that position!  On our Christmas vacation, you learned to clap your hands, and you now love to spontaneously break out into applause.  Other new skills include pounding on your drum and tambourine, saying syllables like "dada," "mama," and "baba" (not in reference to anyone yet!), picking toys up out of a basket, and tipping the basket over to get what you want!

The all-encompassing "first" this month was Christmas, of course!  It was such a thrill to share the holidays with you.  We took you to buy your first Christmas tree, to visit Santa Claus, and to a few Christmas parties.  After Daddy's finals week, we took a family trip to Nashville where we saw the lights at Opryland, strolled around downtown Franklin, and bought your very first Christmas present, a Mister Rogers trolley.  We capped it all off with a trip to Arkansas and Oklahoma to celebrate Christmas and New Years with your grandparents.  Unfortunately, your other big first was that you were sick on Christmas!  You had your first fever and were so pitiful, but after a few days you were back to your sweet little self.

Riggins, you are sweet, cheerful, friendly, noisy, strong, funny, and persistent.  You love Weber, the outdoors, bath time, your toy firetruck and cell phone, your new music table, giving me kisses (but not Daddy, 'cause he's scratchy!), Baby Noah, hollering, riding in the grocery cart, fake coughing, sitting in your high chair, and being sung to, tickled, and flipped upside down.  You don't like lying still to have your diaper changed, avocados, having your face washed or nose wiped, or having an entire room of people laugh at you (but really, who does like that?).

Every night your Daddy and I sneak into your room to peek at you sleeping.  Then we get into our bed and talk about how cute you are and how sweet you are and how awesome you are and how big you are and...well...you get the hint.  We love you to pieces.

Love,
Momma