Vivian is 8 months!

Eight months was one of my favorite stages for Christian as a baby and Vivian has not failed to make it still one of my favorite baby ages.

Milestones:

This month has certainly been a month for milestones!  Vivian not only started sitting up on her own at the beginning of the month, she also got her two bottom teeth.

 

This is Vivian before she learned to sit on her own.  I love this stance.  It cracks me up…she just needs an evening gown and a piano and she’ll look like a torch singer.

Here she is doing what looks like Pilates.  Trying to get strong enough to sit up and eventually crawl.

This last Sunday (the day she turned 8 months)  as I was contemplating that she was now 8-months old and couldn’t even crawl when her older brother was cruising around the furniture on his 8-month birthday; she started crawling across the room for the first time!

Here’s a picture of her little teeth.  The one on the left is just popping through.  She fought me a little bit to take this picture.  Poor little girl has my shaped mouth so it’s difficult to see her teeth even when she smiles.

One other thing that she started doing this month is giving kisses.  She will look at you and lunge at you with her mouth gaping open and then suck on your face while she makes “mmm” noises.  It’s really cute and funny. The only problem with that is now that she has teeth, it doesn’t always feel that great! ;)

She has started babbling even more now and sometimes I swear it’s in the intonation of “I love you”.  I have to post some videos of her cuteness soon.

Eating:

Another thing that has been really fun this month is that she has developed her pincher grasp to the point that she can sit up in her high chair and eat finger foods without help.  Hooray!  This is one of my favorite things about this age: Learning to feed one’s self.  So helpful.  I can actually do the dishes really fast or work on dinner while keeping her happy if I just give her some food to work on for a while.  It’s quite liberating.

Sleep:

The one thing we’ve got to work on is a problem related to her lack of understanding object (or person) permanence.  Ever since she started teething she does not want to be separated from mommy.  It’s quite a pain and has caused a  horrible sleeping problem.  She wants mommy or daddy near her as she falls asleep or she gets herself so upset she throws up within 5 minutes if someone’s not with her.  So frustrating.  It doesn’t help though that she has had a cold for the past 10 or so days.  Poor baby.  She’s been feeling so rotten for weeks because of her teeth and her cold.  We’ve had some very difficult nights with her.  I guess I’ll worry about her sleeping problem when she is better.

This was taken Friday night after she had a fever of 103.4 off and on all day and feeling awful.  It was very relieving to see her sleeping so I had to take a picture.  It was so sweet the way Jared was so patient with her.  I love her little hand on his arm.

Play:

It has been so fun this month now that Vivian can sit up because she is happy to sit and play with her brother. 

This is Vivian smiling at her big brother as he tries to encourage her to try sitting up.

Mostly she just holds a toy in each hand and tastes them now and then while Christian plays next to her, but it’s very cute.  She’s getting more fun everyday.

This has by far been one of the most difficult months health-wise with Vivian.  But she is still a sweet-heart.  She hasn’t seemed quite as happy and easy going this month, but if she was with how sick she’s been besides her teeth, I’d be worried.  I was thinking the other day that her inner diva is coming out more and more but I think it’s quite healthy to let those around you know what your needs are.  We’re all so happy to have this sweet little girl as part of our family.  The other day I asked Christian if he missed being the only child to get attention and he said “Sometimes, but I love that I have the prettiest sister in the whole world”.  I’m so glad that he’s happy with his baby sister.  I’m happy with her too.