Little Dude Update

Lukas turned 8 months old last week.  (At what point do we stop getting excited about him turning another month older?  Oh, you've already lost excitement, you say?  Well he's not your kid, so yea, I can see that.  But it's a big deal to me as his momma.  But I see the silliness of it all.  You'd look at me as if I were an alien if I said that I turned 362 months old last week.  But I digress.)

So what's the little dude up to at 8 months?  Here are some (mostly) unconventional notes for the baby book.

- He did his first pull up yesterday.  Yes, you read that right.  He was in his crib at school, reached up to top of the crib and PULLED UP so that his feet were dangling and he was pulled up.  We do indeed have a climber on our hands.  A mini Hulk, if you will.  I'm now taking bets on how much longer before he climbs right on out of his crib.  I think 10 months will be the magic age.  Pray that I'm wrong.

- He has SIX teeth.  I think he gets this from my side.  I was an early teether.  He has two bottom teeth and four upper teeth.  They're big honkers.  Yes, I refer to them as "honkers" on a regular basis.  I can't explain it. 

- He's for real crawling.  I know, I know I proclaimed a while ago that he was "for real" crawling, and he was, or so I thought.  His belly was still sort of on the ground until a week ago.  He now is on all fours crawling.  Or actually, he's on all threes with one of his feet on the ground. It's odd.  I admit.  But it works and he's fast.  You really cannot take your eyes off him, or he'll be gone.

- He's been on a sort of bottle strike lately and not drinking his entire bottle at school.  He's averaging 3 four ounce bottles again (he was at 6 ounces in each bottle).  I suppose this is because he's eating more and more.  And we bumped him up to the stage 3/chunky baby food.  He's now even eaten chicken (baby food chicken bytheway: gross, gag, yuck) and more fruits and veggies than I can keep track of.  He loves yo-baby yogurt and cheerios.  And we're still happily nursing, so my year long goal is looking attainable for now.  And yes, he has bitten me with those teeth.  It hurts.  Enough said.

- He's still a generally really happy baby but will certainly let you know if he's upset or wants something.  The kid has a great set of lungs.

- We're in the middle of sleep training, and it's going pretty good.  The first night he cried for 47 minutes, then 40, then 20 and then Sunday night he decided to throw a big protest party.  I sat on the screen porch, beer in hand, watching him scream on the monitor for over an hour.  64 minutes to be exact.  It's like he was testing me.  But I didn't give in.  He eventually wore himself out and fell asleep and didn't wake up until 6am Monday morning when he was all smiles.  (Yes, a huge part of me feared that he would hate me, but he didn't. Thank God.)  And you know what happened next?  Monday night he cried for a minute, Tuesday night he cried for 2 minutes and last night he cried on and off, but not very enthusiastically for 20 minutes before he was out for the next 11 hours.  So while I totally resisted this, I'm happy that my little guy is learning to soothe himself to sleep and that we're all getting some shut eye.  The key for anyone trying the "your baby won't hate you" sleep method ("cry it out" sounds so bad, I like my name much better) is to have the video monitor near you but turn the sound completely off and go somewhere in your house where you can't hear the baby.  It's the only reason we made it through.  Beer helps too.  And wine.

- The little dude is happy at day care, loves his teachers and friends and even waves to me and blows kisses when we leave.  Ain't he cute?!