Olivia at 8 months: We’re about to be in a world of trouble

First, a sneeze.

(Wait, how old am I?)

Oh yes! I’m eight months old today!

 

Party!!!!!!!!

Aaaand….. POSE!

It was so nice out that we decided to have our monthly photo shoot outside today.

So here we are. Eight months old. You guys, I’m in the process of planning her first birthday party. It’s in four months. Hold me?

I made a new tab of Olivia’s monthly photos at the top of my blog. As if I needed an excuse to have more pictures of her on here… I can’t believe how my widdle bitty baby has grown!

This month has been busy. So, so busy. Summer’s are always packed, but this month has just been nuts. There seems to be something going on every weekend. We celebrated Chris’s first official Father’s Day the weekend she turned 7 months. Olivia gave him a frame with these pictures of her holding the letters.

We also we able to celebrate with my dad too.

She started swimming lessons at the YMCA, which we discovered she loves.

I mean, they basically splash around, and we learn different holds in the water. And we’ve been practicing submersion which Olivia is still trying to get the hang of, since she’s one of the youngest in the class. But my whole point of these lessons is getting her used to the water to not be scared of it. And not in the sense of having no fear where she tries to drown herself, but more of a healthy respect for water.

We’ve been doing summer ECFE and Olivia has gotten to spend more time with her boyfriend, Jaxon.

Friends that eat plastic crabs together, stay together.

 

Don’t let this face fool you. Exactly ten seconds later she was screaming like a banshee because he wouldn’t let go of her hand.

Wait, are you telling me you just pooped? In class??

We took our first family trip to Duluth towards the end of June.

We went with my parents and two sisters. My family has been taking these annual trips ever since I can remember, so it was so much fun to finally bring my baby.

It’s not to say the trip didn’t have its stressors. The biggest challenge was trying to work out naps for a baby that is unable to sleep anywhere but in a crib with white noise.

Also, it was a bit of a downer to have to hole ourselves up in our hotel room in the dark with the TV on the lowest sound setting at 7:00 praying for an overly tired baby to fall asleep and stay asleep while the rest of my family shopped and walked the boardwalk on Lake Superior. But overall, we survived and the silver lining is that next summer she will be 18 months and down to one nap a day.

We took her to her first Fourth of July pool party which she loved (despite the Serious Face). The girl loves water and I have swimming lessons to thank.

 

 

She also had her first annual day-outing at Stillwater on the St. Croix River. Again, it’s a place I have gone to with my family ever since I can remember, so again, a big deal to bring my baby for the first time. And again, she loved it, as evidenced by this smile:

 

I was determined to be out and about on the 4th of July. I remember on other holidays, even if I did glean some excitement and entertainment, it just seems so different now. Now it’s like, HAVE ALL THE FUN WITH MAH BAYBEE BEFORE SHE GROWS UP WAAAAAAAAAAAH! However, the day didn’t exactly go as we planned. In fact, this is the only picture from that day. Boo.

We wanted to try out the carnival by our house, so after her morning nap we headed out, planning to walk around there a bit and eat a corn dog or four. When we arrived, I looked at Chris from the parking lot. “There is no one here!” Yeah. There was hardly anyone there. It wasn’t even big enough to wander around and people watch. Mostly because there were no people to watch. Apparently we missed the memo that you don’t go to this carnival until later in the evening so you can stay and watch the fireworks. Anyone who comes earlier than this is just a sad new parent with no cabin or water park options. Wah wah.
So we decided to go to a nearby outdoor shopping mall to eat at a woodfire pizza place and walk around.

Newsflash. Closed small business pizza places and outdoor shopping malls are not the place to be either during the day on the 4th. So we ate at a Panda Express (quickly, due to a Screaming baby who wanted to whip her toys around) and walked around a ghost mall before driving back to put Olivia down for her afternoon nap. We ended up ordering pizza and watching the fireworks from our backyard while praying Olivia would sleep through them. Our first 4th of July as a family of three, everyone.

My parents are SO lame.

Finally, we took our second summer trip down to Iowa for Chris’s parents’ anniversary dinner.

 

Olivia’s sleep habits were worse than when we went to Duluth. She didn’t nap, at all, except for cat naps in the car. Though I have to give it to her that she was pretty well-behaved there and back in the car as well as the long drives through the country to get places.

At the Amish grocery store, Stringtown, Mama’s favorite place to shop in Iowa.

She tried cottage cheese and mashed potato at the restaurant but then wanted to scream the whole time. Luckily we had an abundance of family there to hold and walk around our little preshus to keep her from bringing the house down.

Nicknames: Livvie, Monkey, Monks, Bug

Weight: 20 lbs according to home scale
Length: 28.5 in (how is she up three inches in a month?) according to home measurements

Head Circumference: 45 cm
Diaper size: 3
Clothing size: 6 month and 6-9 month clothes. She’s also fitting into some of the smaller 9 months outfits.

This is my brooding face.

Eating: I would say she is nursing every 3 hours or so during the day. Pretty much whenever one of us decides. She is up once at night to nurse, between 2 and 4:30. Baby-Led Weaning is continuing to go well.  New solids: Steak, asparagus, broccoli, corn on the cob, cottage cheese, mashed potato, pesto pasta, strawberries, and hamburger.

When she isn’t whipping her food off her tray down to an overly eager Cattle Dog or shrieking at the top of her lungs to politely excuse herself from the table, she’s actually an adorable dinner guest. She stares Very Seriously at whomever is currently speaking, quietly munching her broccoli like she’s intently paying attention.

Can you repeat that? I didn’t catch what you said about Dani Mathers. You mean she did what??

And then I’m like, “Awww Chris, look at her she’s so cute!!” And then she’ll scream angrily at me and try to hit me in the eye with a wedge of cucumber. I’ve had my share of dodging food lately.

Sleeping: Her sleep has actually been really good. She started out seven months sleeping fantastic! We transitioned her out of her rock n play in the room with us, into her crib into her own room right when she turned 7 months. She slept from 9:45 to 3:45 on her own, until she joined me in bed. But now she goes until 4am or later most nights.

The best part is when she goes back down after nursing and sleeps on her own until 8:30 or even 9! I attribute this to her new love of sleeping on her tummy. Even after two vacations this month of sleeping in a new environment in her pack n play she came home and adjusted right back to what she was previously doing, like she really knows her own crib now. Her naps have been good, averaging 1-2 hours twice a day. The thing is, since being able to sit up on her own, instead of lying there and eventually falling asleep, she sits up and that is obviously not conducive to falling asleep.

But lying down was SO 6 months, Mama.

Milestones: This month she just EXPLODED in her development!
~The day she turned 7 months, she got up on all fours and rocked. Chris calls it her twerk.
~At 7.5 months, she went from her hands and knees, into a sitting position (I have been sitting here for ten minutes now trying to figure out how to word that sentence…).
~And on 7/10, a week shy of 8 months, she crawled! Sort of. Kind of. Not really, I guess. I mean, this whole month, she has been traveling around by a series of sits, pivoting, and hands and knees. She would scoot backward, but couldn’t figure out how to go forward. That day, the afternoon we returned from Iowa, she put one hand on the floor, then the other, and then one knee forward and the other. And that is the extent of her crawling so far. It’s crude, it’s not pretty, but… she’s getting there. Not that I’m in any hurry being that our house is in no way baby-proofed.
~Also, waving! Probably the cutest thing ever I’ve seen her do. So it’s fun to make her wave at me now every time I leave the room. “Bai!!!” Or walk into a room. “Hai!!!” It’s how she interacts with most strangers now. This weekend, my car broke down and luckily Chris was with me and we were able to pull into a parking lot of a Festival. I brought a screamy Olivia inside to the inner coffee shop and she immediately attracted one of the workers to come over and talk to us her. “Hai!” Olivia waved frantically at her. Which of course was the cutest thing ever.
~She’s also started the Stranger Danger thing. Not to everyone, because some people are obviously way too much fun to act shy around. But the majority of people will be met with a stare, a snuggle into Mom or whatever safety is currently available, a stare, a frantic look at Mom, another stare and then a tentative smile. Like a raised corner of the cheek so quick you think you missed it.

Speech: Still saying, “Ma! Mama! Mmmmm-MOM!” She also started “Ba ba!” I’ve been working on getting her to say, “Da da” but she just looks at her with her brows furrowed like her mom is a flaming moron. And one day I did catch her saying, “Glah-ah ah!” Or something like that. Also, screaming. We’re back to that now. I remember the Screaming at four months and really she had stopped doing that until a week before she turned 8 months. We’re going on a week of this now. Not crying, but yelling and hollering. I officially have a Screamer. One that can split your eardrums with her shrieks. So that’s fun.

I’m not a screamer. I just simply have no patience with life right now.

Health: No signs of teeth that I can see, but still fantastically orally fixated and gums everything in sight. Fingers, toys, stranger’s necklaces, the bag of frozen meatballs while grocery shopping.

She sees it, she chews it. We had even given her some doses of Tylenol at night because we weren’t sure if the screaming she was doing was a result of teething or not. Besides that, she has decided to break out from all diapers and wipes except for Pampers Swaddlers and Sensitive. The most expensive. I’m not really sure what happened because she was in other diapers before with no problems and we’ve been using Target brand wipes without an issue until now. But sure enough, going back to those Pampers cleared it right up. Figures.

Likes: Riding on my back in the Ergo, swimming, waving, screaming, eating solids with us at dinner, playing in the grass, nursing, swinging, her crib (GASP!), playing with zippers and Velcro, banging toys together, bath time, attempted to travel around the living room.

Dislikes: When you take ANYTHING from her: dog toy, grass, teethers, the package of frozen meatballs when it comes time to pay, in which she will Scream and whip her hands about angrily. Sitting in her high chair when there is no food. Why the hell is there no food?????

Undecided about: Not a lot. Everything is either/or this month. Except maybe stroller rides. And vacationing.

Looking forward to: Her crawling. Not that I am particularly wanting her to be mobile, but maaaaaybe then she will stop this Screaming and fussiness. Also, the time is coming for baby-proofing All Of The Things.

31 weeks

32 weeks

33 weeks

34 weeks

Aaaand…..
As soon after I finished this post…. We have a crawler.