8 Months Old

Madeline is now 8 months old and she is changing almost daily.

She is crawling everywhere and into everything. Everytime she notices the stairs, she crawls as fast as she can towards them and starts going up. We are still working on safely coming down. The problem is that she rarely wants to come down, so it is hard to practice.
She is a pretty good climber. She can get over people and things in her way. She seems to really like climbing into her carseat as well. I think she likes to chew on the metal buckles.

She's pretty curious as well.

She's got the "cruising" thing down. She can pull up on anything and walk around while she holds on.

Sometimes she even lets go without realizing it and can balance herself for at least 10 seconds.

She still enjoys books. She loves to pull the books off of her shelves. She still enjoys reading/flipping the pages of 10 Little Ladybugs. She also likes the Peekaboo Baby books where she has to flip a page over and find the baby hiding. She will do it over and over.

She plays very nicely by herself. She pulls out books to look at, plays with her toys, looks out the window and explores our house. I just have to keep checking on her so she doesn't end up at the top of the steps without me noticing. But, she also likes for people to play with her. We have a lot of fun together.

As soon as she hears the key turn in the door, she turns to look to see who it is. And when she sees her daddy come through the door, she gets the biggest smile on her face. Madeline loves her daddy so much.

Other things:

~She says "mamamama" and "dadadada". Although she doesn't really call for us, she seems to say "mama" mostly when she is sad or hungry. And she says "dada" when she is happy and wants to play. So, it seems she does kind of know our "roles" :)

~She is working on getting her top two teeth. Her gums are very swollen. So, they should be here sometime this month.

~She doesn't enjoy eating too much. (Really, I think her problem is sitting still to eat.) But, she does seem to like food off of our plates or finger foods. So, she has had bites of chicken salad, roast beef, potatoes, carrots, potato chips, strawberries, green beans, ritz crackers, and anything else that isn't too bad for her :) She also eats the Gerber dried fruits and the sweet potato puffs. She still nurses 2 or 3 times a day and usually has a bottle in the middle of the day since she won't lay still long enough to eat. She eats cereal for breakfast lunch and dinner along with a fruit or vegetable. We think she is mostly over the dairy sensitivity. But, we aren't going to officially give her some to try until she is 9 months old.

~She is sleeping through the night from about 7-8pm until about 7-8am. She takes 2 naps, each are usually 1 1/2 -2 hours long.

~She can walk behind a baby walker. You can see her in a video to the right.

~She loves to taste everything. I don't think there is a thing this child won't eat. Sometimes she has to taste every step as she goes up the stairs. She eats leaves, flowers, mulch, dirt off the floor, shoes, socks, clothes out of the hamper, pretty much anything. She should be on the no-smoking commercial where the girl goes around licking everything.

~She can wave bye bye. (You can also see her doing this in the videos to the right.)

She will be taking her first plane ride this week. We will see how that goes. I'm sure she will do great. Madeline just keeps getting more and more fun each day. She is learning and doing so much. What a blessing to be her mommy!