Dear Emersyn: 8 Months

Baby girl, how I love you.  Even with your sleep issues (more on that it a bit), you are still such a happy, sweet, snuggly girl.

Your eating habits this month have changed slightly, I'm not sure if you're just MUCH more efficient, or if you're too easily distracted, but you often nurse for 3-4 minutes and you're done.  You've moved from every 2.5-3 hours to every 3.5-4 hours, which I was very hesitant about because you're still getting a dreamfeed AND a night feed, but that's the only way I can get you to nurse longer than a minute or two.  I'd much rather you eat every 3-3.5 hours during the day and drop the night feed then the dreamfeed, but of course, those are your longest nursing sessions- lasting anywhere from 8-15 minutes!  It's like you're taking up then and can't be bothered to nurse during the day.

You really enjoy solids, this month we've added in zucchini, yellow squash, parsnips, yogurt, apple, pear, cheese, pumpkin, chicken and puffs.  You love zucchini, pumpkin, and puffs, while pear took you a few days to warm up to, and you're not a big fan of yogurt at all.  We do a fruit or yogurt in the mornings, mixed in with oatmeal, and then you usually get a couple of veggies or a veggie and chicken at night.  We're venturing back into Baby Led Weaning, but you still get mostly chunky purees.

Then there's sleep.  On the positive, your naps have improved drastically.  You get up for the day around 7:30am, and go down for a nap without fuss between 9:30 and 10.  You sleep for AT least an hour, usually an hour and a half, and on the rare occasion, 2 hours!  Pretty big difference from the last few months.  If you only sleep for an hour for your first nap you will take three naps in the day, but if you sleep longer you do two naps.  And, your second nap is at least an hour too- usually closer to an hour and 15 minutes.  Go Emerbaby!

Nighttime sleep is still a struggle.  You go down for the night with no fuss between 7:45 and 8:15, sleep great until between 10-11, get a dreamfeed, and then its usually several wakeups until you get up for the day.  At a bare minimum you wake up to eat between 4 and 5, but you've been known to wake up every couple of hours, every hour, or every half an hour with far too much frequency.  I would say you've had less than 2 wakeups a night only about 3 nights this month and 5-7 wakeups at least 10 times this month.  The rest have fallen in between.  Sometimes all you want is your paci, sometimes you will cry until I pick you up and rock you back to sleep, sometimes you're up for quite awhile before you settle back down.  I've tried letting you cry, nursing you more, nursing you less.  I've tried ibuprofen in case it's your teeth, warmer room, cooler room, blah blah blah.   I've resorted to turning off the monitor, but I can still hear you when you really get going.  I have no idea what made your naps suddenly fall into place, but I hope your nighttime sleep follows suit soon.

Even with the lack of nighttime sleep, you're still the light of our lives.  This month you learned to pat, as in we pick you up and you start patting our backs.  It's like you're saying "Good job mom, you're the best".  At least, that's what I tell myself, and my heart comes close to bursting with love.

You've also learned how to wave, and since we want to encourage you to associate waving with someone waving back, I find myself waving back at you a LOT during the day.  Waving often turns into reaching for us, and you can be rather insistent about it these days.  You love to be read to, though sometimes it's still a bit more interesting to chew on the books than listen nicely.  We spend a little bit of time on Starfall.com each day, which allows you to indulge your love of mama's computer with something that's actually educational.  You've added more consonants to your vocabulary, but no "Mama" yet.  And you don't know what any of it means.  You still love to blow raspberries, and new this month is sticking out your tongue, which we think is in response to your two bottom teeth.

You're VERY close to crawling- you can get one forward motion, but then you collapse on your belly. You love to crawl ON mama, and get pretty insistent about me sitting close enough that you can do so.  You really like to use me as a jungle gym, but it usually results in snuggles, so I don't mind.  You also seem pretty interested in pulling up, especially in the bath.

Despite not being able to actually crawl yet, you are fairly mobile using a combination of rolling, scooting, and stretching.  Just how mobile you are was a bit of a surprise to me at the beginning of this month when I was getting ready in the bathroom and despite placing you in the center of the bed with pillows around (as I had many times before), you rolled yourself right off our bed onto the hardwood floor.  Panicked call to the nurse line, and a couple of days watching you very closely revealed you were just fine, but there's no guilt like Mom guilt, and you haven't been on the bed alone since.

We celebrated Christmas this month, and although you had no idea what was going on, you loved seeing all your family (and they loved seeing you).  It really was our best Christmas, and you are, by far, the best gift we could have ever asked for this year.

Favorites this month- our dog, Gus (oh how you love him), bathtime, your paci, buckets, cell phones, a rather creepy clownish rattle thing you got from your grandparents, the foam letters we got for your bath, being upside down, and bouncing.  You also love zippers, buttons, and anything shiny.

You, my sweet baby girl, are our favorite.  We love you.

Love,

Mama