8 Month Update

6 January 2014 – Today marks the day as Sam’s second tooth’s appearance. She now has two little razor blades in the centre of her jaw. She loves to smile now so as to best show off her new toofies, by brandishing a huge cheesy grin. It’s gorgeous! She is also enjoying how much better she can now chew through her food, and she loves to feed herself using her hands.

Her new trick is to feel the texture of anything new on her hands. She’ll feel food between her first two fingers and thumb, and she loves to finger/arm paint with any spew that she happens to deposit on the ground.

She seems to think high pitched noises are hilarious, as is anything that might get the adrenaline flowing or happens to put her higher than us. She’s starting to laugh a lot more now, and I very nearly got a belly laugh from her the other day.

16 January 2014 – Last night, Sam started army crawling (arm over arm, proper commando crawling). She figured this out because she couldn’t sleep, and she’s been practising it all day. Also, today she was playing with the nappy basket this morning when it was full, and she got up on her knees, and then she pulled herself to her feet. When she was sick of this, she plopped herself down on her butt. I’m desperate for her to learn to crawl before she learns to walk, and she is so close. She can lift each limb off the ground, but she hasn’t figured out how to put it all together and crawl.

17 January 2014 – It’s official! My baby girl can now pull herself up on things so that she is sitting on her knees. All those things that were just out of reach now need to be put that little bit higher as they are now in reach. I’m quite proud of this accomplishment, but I still wish she’d learn to crawl. Maybe tomorrow?

24 January 2014 – Yesterday evening, at around 7:15pm, Sam figured out how to crawl!  Yay! Now I can relax about all this standing and pottering around she’s doing. She’s pulling herself up on everything (me included), and she constantly wants to climb higher. She can throw a good screaming tantrum too when she’s not getting what she wants.

29 January 2014 – My baby girl is 8 months old today! She had a CHN appointment back on 20 January, so I’ll go ahead and summarise now.

Last appointment: six weeks previously
Weight: 7.9kg 51st percentile (400g increase)
Height: 69cm 60th percentile (3cm increase)
Head Circumference: 45.2cm 93rd percentile (1cm increase)

Her speech range is constantly expanding, although she’s not saying any words yet. Her repertoire includes um, b, ge, de, ka, rar, boo. She’s also started giggling a lot more. She loves to squeal.

She’s pretty much grown out of 00 size clothes, except in separates where she pretty much constantly is a size smaller.

She’s mastered sitting on her knees, as it’s the only sitting position she can easily get herself into, and she’s constantly pulling herself up on things. She’s banged her head many a time this week, and I’ve spent a lot of time comforting Sam when she gets distressed. She’s also started coasting along the furniture. She still prefers swimming along the ground to crawling, but she does a couple more crawl steps every day.