Thursday, August 2, 2012

Hank 8 Months


If I were to give this past month a title it would be Clingy-butt.  Hank has really started to notice when I am in the room with him and when I walk away (And sometimes daddy just doesn't do the trick, this boy loves his momma).  If he's not in a really good mood (i.e. just woke up and was fed and snuggled with for a while) and I try to set him down, he starts crawling after me, crying as he crawls.  It's actually kind of cute, and if it weren't for having to run after the other crazy kid at my house, I would absolutely love it. He's an extremely cuddly little guy and while he does well with independent play, he definitely needs time when he can bury his head in my chest and suck his thumb (oh, I hope this lasts for a long time!)

He's also really got the hang of the idea that he can cry and get his way - he let's me know when he's done eating by crying, when he wants out of the car seat by crying and when he isn't ready to go down for a nap he crys and/or jumps up in down in his crib (pretty cute to watch in the video monitor).  He still doesn't fuss a lot, but I've just noticed that my once pretty silent boy likes to voice his opinion a lot these days.

I think we went through one sickness this past month - Hank was pretty fussy and Ben needed his ears checked, so I had him take Hank to medcheck to check his ears.  Nothing was wrong (I'm now batting 2/4 with my personal diagnosis of him having an ear infection...shoot), so we just suffered through some rough nights until he started feeling better.

SLEEP - Hank dropped his third nap early this month. He was giving me three really crappy naps (not laying down easily and waking up early) and I couldn't figure out what was going on and then I realized I was laying him down to much.  He typically gives me two 1hr 15min - 1hr 45min naps a day.  Some days he needs 3, but that is pretty rare.  Naps are typically from 9:30/10am-11/11:30am and 1:30-3pm (ish).  He then goes down for bed around 7pm... it's tough to stretch him till then, but it just didn't make sense to throw a nap in between 3 and 7pm.  He sleeps till 7/7:30am, with a nursing around 4-5:30am.  He seems to randomly go through weeks when he wakes another time during the night (around 2-3am) but I try if it all possible to ignore him.

EAT - With dropping the nap, Hank also dropped a nursing.  He is now nursing when he wakes for the day and when he goes to bed, then after each nap (and of course the middle of the night feeding...) I'm starting to get excited that Hank is getting close to a year and will be done with nursing.  It's not that I don't love it, but I'm definitely ready to get more sleep at night and ready to have a little more freedom as a momma.  Although I did such a good job storing up milk at the beginning, I've had way more freedom than I did with Lucy (at this age with Lucy I remember not being able to ever get enough milk to leave a bottle).  He eats solid foods when we do, and is basically eating whatever we eat.  I try to give him more pure forms of the food we eat - but he will pretty much put down anything.  He still won't take much from a spoon and prefers to feed himself... which is quite a mess!

We get comments on his smile all the time - the things people say the most about Hank are that "he's got the best smile" and "he is so happy!".  I agree with both!

He has really gotten the hang of waving (see below) and he also learned to clap this month.  Before he started clapping he would bang both his hands on the table in response to us clapping or whenever he was excited.  He loves crawling to things and pulling up to standing (especially the back door).  He LOVES ruthie's food, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we are inadvertently starving Ruthie because I have to put the food up almost the entire day.  Sorry Ruth.  I love listening to him work so hard and move so fast across the kitchen floor to get to the dog food, once he's eyed that it is down.  And then he gives out a cry of protest once I pry it from his fingers and move it to the counter

He also does a lot of cruising and has started pushing objects around and walking behind them.  He likes to walk while we hold his hands, but he doesn't really seem to have the whole balance thing down yet, so I think we're pretty far from the walking stage.

He still mostly just says da da and likes to do a lot of squealing, screaming, grunting and blowing raspberries

I decided to try a couple different poses for this months pictures since I haven't been having much success keeping Hank sitting still in the crib.  Here is Teddy with Hank in the kitchen.
And posing in his chair...
And now for what started as a photo session with Hank and turned into a party in Hank's crib...

If you're thinking that the blonde little peanut had anything to do with it.... you are correct...

 This is Lucy's favorite way to hold Hank... it looks cute here, but typically it goes from a lovingly sweet hold to a strangling death grip.  We're working on that...
I love the below shot... how that leg got in that position is beyond me...

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