Liam ~ 8 Months

Liam is 8 Months!

His favorites...

He loves his big brother Grayson, especially when he makes him laugh by jumping around.  He loves being held and will cry when you leave the room.   He loves chewing on anything he can get his hands on.  He rolls onto his belly right away and has started getting into everything.  It is so hard to change his diaper now because he wants to flip over onto his belly and explore his surroundings.   

New Things...

No more helmet ~ 

We went to his helmet doctor on April 4th and got the okay to stop wearing the helmet.  The doctor said he had a huge growth spurt and couldn't believe the progress he made and said it was, "remarkable."  The normal time for wearing the helmet is 4 months, but after less than 2 1/2 months he was able to stop wearing it.  We were so excited when we got the news.  It will be so nice to give him smooches whenever I want and not have to worry about the helmet.

Clapping ~ 

His nanny Marta has been working with him on clapping.  She taught him in Spanish and English.  When Daddy sings, "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands." he will clap and get really excited.  It's so cute how he loves to clap.

Sitting up ~ 

He is sitting up on his own, but will sometimes fall backwards because he likes to arch his back.  

Eating solid foods ~

He hates baby food and somehow knows the difference.  He does like eating puffs, strawberries, mashed up cereal with formula, raspberries and teething biscuits.  He is definitely doing better with the food, but still does not like yogurt or baby food.  When we were visiting the Ohlanders I gave him a small taste of eggs and he had an allergic reaction.  He got hives, but luckily they went away quickly.  

Teething ~

He almost has 1-2 teeth and they have been trying to come in for a while.  They are really bothering him so I hope they come in soon.  You can see them under his skin and can feel the bump.   

Things he loves ~

He loves his brother Grayson and laughs at everything he does.  He lights up when he sees Grayson and is so interested in whatever he does.

He loves going on walks, playing with his stackable blocks, stackable rings, steering wheel, chew toys and Grayson's toys, especially his cars.

He loves flipping over onto his belly and grabbing onto anything he can get his hands on.  It is so hard to change his diaper now, especially after his bath.

He loves bath time.  We finally moved him into the next stage of his bath tub.  I forgot there was a second step, but luckily remembered in time.  The bath tub lets him sit up so he can splash and play.  He loves to play with Grayson's bath letters.

Size ~

He is wearing 12 month clothes, but some things are getting a little tight because of his adorable chunky legs and arms.  He weighs 19.2 pounds. 

Doctor Visit ~

Our poor little guy had to go to the doctor's office twice in two weeks and had to go on two different antibiotics.  It started as a cold and turned into an double ear infection.   It was so hard watching him in pain.  It took 4 days before the medicine started working.       

Plays in his crib ~

Most mornings he will wake up and play in his crib for a little while and it's so cute to hear him babble.  Other times he will cry because he wants his bottle and wants it now.

Routine ~

He gets up around 6/6:30am and has a bottle.  We hang out until Grayson wakes up (around 7/8am).  He has breakfast around 8 (fruit, puffs, mashed up cereal with formula and cheese) and then goes down for another nap around 9/9:30 and has his next bottle (he normally drinks 5-7 ounces during the day and more for the 1st and last bottle).  He normally sleeps from 1-2 hours for his morning nap.  He has his next bottle around 11am and eats lunch around 12 (same as breakfast as he is very picky).  He goes down for his second nap around 2pm and has another bottle.  Grayson and Liam normally take their afternoon naps around the same time.  Liam normally sleeps 1 hour for his second nap.  He has dinner around 5pm and sometimes one last bottle before he goes to bed.  He takes a bath around 6/6:30 and goes to bed around 7/7:30 (sometimes 8). 

Grayson ~ 8 Months

Grayson Christian is 8 months old!  He is army crawling, eating some people food, pushing himself up onto his toys that are stationary on the floor, making wet, sloppy raspberry sounds with his mouth, swinging in the baby swing at the park and getting into everything.  He is still the biggest flirt and loves to put on a show.  He weighs 20 pounds 10 1/2 ounces and is thinning out a little because he is moving around so much.  He is still our little chuncky monkey with the cutest rolls, but they are definitely getting smaller.  His hair is growing a lot and his swirl is still very prevalent, which we love, but not sure he will.  He is our perfect little baby and we love watching him grow.  It's hard to believe he will be one year old in four months.  We love our little guy so much!

Grayson is wearing size 9 months and some 12 month clothes.  We are starting to put the 9 month clothing away as it becomes too small.  He is still wearing size 3 diapers for the daytime, but we will be switching to size 4 very soon and size 4 for nighttime.  He is wearing size 2 shoes, but we will be switching to size 3 very soon.  He is wearing medium and large sleep sacks, which is so hard to believe because it feels like yesterday he was in a size small.

We are just starting to add breakfast to his routine.  We are trying to do yogurt for breakfast, 1-2 packets of stage 2 baby food for lunch and 1-2 packets of baby food and rice cereal mixed in for dinner.  He just learned how to suck the food out of the packet, but makes the biggest mess so this is definitely a work in progress.  He also has 5 bottles per day of formula with 4-6 ounces and 7 ounces before bed.  I hope to get rid of one of those bottles soon.  On April 18th he tried yogurt for the first time and ate every last bite and wanted more.  When we went to visit Allison, Cora, Elin and Gabe on April 24th he tried avocados, raspberries and organic gouda chicken sausage and he loved all of it.  Also that day he got in the baby swing at the park for the first time and had a blast.  He has also tried bananas, chocolate ice cream bar (a tiny bit of my sample at Costco), cupcake from Holly after his baptism, ice cream and hamburger at his baptism and fruit and spinach smoothies we make at home.  So far he has liked everything he has tried of people food.  We hope to keep introducing new foods to him and hope that he is a good eater, but we will see as I know a lot of kids are picky eaters.

He has recently started getting up once at night, but we let him cry it out because he just wants us to come get him.  Also, he has been getting up around 5 or 5:30am and has not been going back down.  This has made his nap schedule a little more difficult because he wants to take his first nap at 8am, but that throws off his nap schedule for the day so we try to push him a little.  He can normally go 3-4 hour stretches of staying up, but normally in the morning it's more like 2-3 hours.  He wakes up between 5-6:30am and has a bottle, takes a nap around 8:30/9:15am, has lunch around 11, then another bottle around 12, takes a nap around 1:30, another bottle around 3, dinner around 5 and his last bottle around 6:45pm.    

We now have a crawler, actually he's army crawling, but very fast so I'm not sure he is in a hurry to crawl on all fours.  He first crawled on April 30th in front of his momma, Oma and Julia.  We were so excited and shocked and knew it was all about to change.  Our little guy was entering a whole new stage.  Daddy was a little bummed because he was in Detroit for work and missed it, but he saw it the next day and was so happy.  He is now into everything so we had to baby proof the family room and will be doing the rest of the house now.  He likes to remove the outside piece of the soft floor in the family room and tries to chew it so we had to remove this piece from the whole floor.  He is also trying to open the cabinet doors under our television.  We had to move our wine rack because he kept crawling over to it and trying to get the wine bottles out.  I'm not sure what we are going to do about the puppy pad that we leave in the bathroom for Bella as he is now crawling over to the bathroom.

Notes on pictures below

Grayson ate gouda chicken sausage for the first time at the Ohlanders and loved it.