Eight Months! Can it be?!

Time for the ol' status report on Josiah at eight months. The more of life goes by, the more I notice it's difficult for me to retain even important details about life. Hence, blogging here about possibly mundane (to you) details. Though he's not officially crawling yet, Josiah is essentially completely mobile. He army crawls everywhere he wants to be and pulls himself up so he can reach the really exciting things (crayons, paper, playdough, leftover snacks...) on the top of Michaela's little white table. He can sit up on his own and enjoys using both hands to explore. He loves electrical cords, the vacuum cleaner, eating dirt off of my floor, and observing the cat and the dog. He thinks his big sister is amazing. Blowing raspberries on his belly sends him into giggles galore. He's fully jumping out of the bouncy chair where I used to strap him so I could shower, so now I can only shower while he's asleep. I tried yesterday to just let him crawl on the bathroom floor with his toys, but that's really not going to work since he can open the shower door, eats the dog bed, and it took him about 60 seconds to discover the garbage can, knock it over, chew on the plastic liner, and begin to explore its contents (before I could see how far he was getting, turn off the water, wrap a towel and jump across the bathroom). He's motivated. And learning the meaning of "no-no."

He's eating like a champ, probably weighs about 19 pounds and is on the verge between 9 month and 12 month clothing. He practices feeding himself with "puffs" which are baby finger food that essentially melt in his mouth. He gagged himself on toasty o's last week, but this week when I break them in half he is doing great with them. He's also doing soft pieces of fruit and avocado with his two teeth. I feel like more teeth are imminent. So far he hasn't met a food he doesn't like.

Sleep... sweet sleep. A couple of times he's slept from 7-6 which was wonderful. Two nights later he was waking up every 4 hours. Last night it was just one awakening in the middle of the night. He's so unpredictable! We've tried to let him cry it out a couple of nights, but his capacity for screeching long, loud, and stubbornly (say 1.5 hours?) is daunting. We're backing off on that as it really is easier on me to just get up, feed him, and put him back to bed than to listen to him cry. We'll see how he does and try it again later. Maybe - wishful thinking - he'll just do it on his own!

We love our little guy!