After the first round of pictures turned out to be full of "squirmy worm" (as Charlotte calls her), I decided to try again later. While she was laying still, I found a great photo opportunity. :o)
After her nap, she was bright-eyed & bushy-tailed, so we tried taking more pictures. They came out much better!
At 8 months old, Natalie is in full-blown baby mode. That perfect age where she's not sleeping all day long (although that did have its charms...), but she's not walking around or talking yet, which is when they start morphing into toddlers. She just learned how to crawl with her belly up off the floor last week and has it mastered now. Crawling is such a complex and exhausting method of mobility - - I can't believe a little baby has the coordination and stamina to do it for hours every day. Oh wait, she gets three naps every day to rest and recover! :o)
Natalie is eating 3 "solid" meals each day, in addition to nursing about 4-5x each day. She eats a variety of fruit, vegetables, and meats. She also likes yogurt, tiny bites of bread, macaroni noodles, and PUFFS! I pour out a handful of Puffs after dinner and she goes to town! She doesn't quite have that pincer grasp down, so the Puffs stick to her hands and she just tries to shove her whole fist into her mouth, but somehow she manages to get just about every single Puff into her mouth! We give her bottles here & there, mostly so she accepts them willingly when I'm not available. She hasn't been to the doctor in a couple of months, so I'm not sure how much she weighs, but I do know she's growing! She's wearing 9 month clothes, and her dainty little feet are finally starting to outgrow her newborn socks!
Unfortunately, she is still not sleeping through the night. After struggling with pretty extreme sleep deprivation for 18 months with Charlotte, though, I'm really trying not to complain too much about Natalie's sleep. She goes to sleep around 8:00 most nights, and for the last couple of weeks has been waking between 1:00-2:00 to eat, then back to bed until 5:00/5:30.... and usually staying up for a few hours then. 5:00 wake-up, after a 30-45 minute interruption in my sleep can make me pretty grouchy, but it's better than when she was waking up 3 or 4 times every night - - she did that from about 4 months until 7 months old or so. Whew! I'm not sure what sparked the 5:00 internal alarm, but I sure do hope it's just another phase and we'll get back closer to 7:00 pretty soon (Charlotte has also been waking up between 6:00-6:30 most mornings, about an hour earlier than usual - - they're conspiring against me).
In addition to crawling, Natalie is also starting to pull up on furniture. She's really good at pulling up to a kneeling position, but has gotten all the way up to her feet several times, too. This is good news for me, since i've always worried about her hips & it seemed that it took a long time for her to bear weight on her legs.
She's babbling a lot more lately, lots of B sounds, and F sounds. Every now & then she'll holler "DADADADADA" or "MAMAMAMAMA" but usually it's "blather blather blather blather" (honestly, that's what it sounds like - I'm not just using the word blather).
Her favorite things to do right now include:
- splashing in the bath
- playing with Charlotte
- Nomming on everything, but especially the "bus people"
- smacking her hands on any surface she can reach
- playing the little baby piano
- eating in her high chair
Still no teeth, but I have a feeling they're going to show up any day now. They just have to.
She's our sweet, mellow, smiley baby & we wish we could bottle up time and save these moments forever!
