Notes at 8 months

Here are some notes about Maddie at 8 months old in no particular order:

She is officially crawling!  We will put up another post soon with videos and pictures.  She has been getting on her hands and knees and scooting backwards for a while.  She also has been going from  her back or tummy to the sitting position, which started on the day we went to Tulsa on 7/2.  She has been getting better at this every day.  A day or so after she turned 8 months she began to go forward a tiny bit before she would push back to the sitting position.  On Sunday 7/12, 3 days after turning 8 months, she officially crawled for about 5 feet without stopping!  She probably would have crawled further but she reached her destination.

She has her 2 bottom teeth and we suspect her 2 top teeth are coming in soon. I feel two little lumps on her gums and think they will pop any day now. She is waking up earlier during the night which is abnormal and she's been chewing on things very hard along the top of her gums. Hopefully they pop any day...

We are starting to give her solid / table foods two times and will work our way up to three times a day probably at 9 months.  So far she has mostly had vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, green beans, peas and sweet potatoes.  She has had fruit only a few times and usually it's in a pouch mixed with a vegetable. We have fed her some table food (usually to keep her occupied while we are eating ourselves!). She has tasted bread, bagels, hash browns, mashed potatoes, hummus, rice, a little bit of chicken and even a taste of a swedish meatball from Ikea.

It seems the second she turned 8 months old, Maddie started to get a bit of a temper!  We see it if she is very focused on playing with a particular toy. If we try to take it away or give her a new toy, she will pout and start crying very loudly and throw her head back (our friend Colleen calls it the "back bend of despair").  We will try to distract her with another toy but it sometimes doesn't work. If she's having a bad tantrum, even giving her back the original toy doesn't work!  We haven't made the correlation yet but we hope it is connected to her being cranky and tired and close to nap time!

She started to clap when we were in Tulsa over the 4th of July weekend!  She recognizes the song "If You're Happy and You Know It" and will often clap at just the right time.  She will also clap when she sits up or grabs a toy.  Sometimes she claps for the heck of it.  When she wakes up in the morning (or middle of the night) she pushes her self up and will clap a few times.

She has learned how to lift her arms above her head, courtesy of Grandma Kathy!  She will lift her arms over her head and we will say "Yay!"  She will do it unprompted as well. If she is crawling or on her belly, she will sit up and lift her arms over her head like "Yay! I sat up!"  It's adorable!  She also lifts her arms up when she wants to be picked up (or we think she wants to be picked up).

She can definitely make the sign for Milk, she does it often and we will give her a bottle which she gladly takes. Then other times she makes the sign for milk (after she's eaten), so we are not sure if she's hungry or just moving her hand.  If she does it when we are pretty sure she is not hungry, she stares at her hand making the movement, and then will put her hand in her mouth. 

Pau Pau has been taking Maddie to the toilet to pee if she notices Maddie hasn't wet her diaper yet (in China, babies are potty trained very young as diapers are very expensive).  There are days where Maddie will pee 10 times in the toilet!  This is probably too much information, but she has actually pooped once in the toilet as well!  We purchased a baby toilet so we can sit her on it from tiem to time, and she has peed in it a few times as well.  We of course are not potty training just yet but it is good to know that Maddie is comfortable with the toilet!  She will turn and give a cute smile whenever she is done.

Her naps are still all over the place. She still normally naps 3 times a day (she rarely naps 2 or 4 times a day).  Lately her naps have been a little shorter than normal, usually her short naps are 45 minutes, but sometimes they are only 35 minutes!  But she knows when to make up for it - she will give us a 1.5-2 hour nap when she's had a day or two of poor napping.  We will eventually transition her to 2 naps when she starts showing the signs.

She still normally sleeps about 11-12 hours a night, we will sometimes get a 13 hour night!  And she still normally wakes up once a night to eat (anywhere from 3-5am).  However, another reason I think she is teething is that she is waking up a little earlier than usual to eat (around 1-2am).  A couple of nights ago she got up twice in the middle of the night - once at 11pm (which also happened about a week before her bottom teeth popped) and then again at 3am.  There is something called an 8 month sleep regression where babies sleep gets a bit out of whack due to all of the developmental changes they are going through - so it makes sense - and we hope it passes soon!  Mama misses her 9-10 hour stretches of sleeping baby (and approximately 5 hour stretch of sleep for Mama)!

While she is a happy baby, she is also very serious.  If she knows you, she will babble and laugh and play.  But she is very serious when first meeting a stranger or someone she hasn't seen in a while. She gets very quiet and just stares at the new person.  So far she hasn't shown any signs of "stranger danger" or separation anxiety from either Joseph or me - which is great!  We can hand her over to someone new and Maddie will go right over to the new person, looking at them inquisitively.

She has started to get excited when she sees someone she knows, like when I get home from work or when Joseph comes downstairs in the morning.  It is so great to see her excited when she sees us!  She will often lift her arms up to be picked up and hugged.

She still loves to give kisses.  We will still get big open mouth kisses, sometimes with tongue.  She will also give kisses to new people once she warms up to them.

She loves cats!  She loves our cats and wants to pet them whenever they are around.  She has even started to crawl towards our cats!  Lately all she wants to do is kiss our cats. She will crawl towards Scaredy Cat with a big open mouth and if he stays still, she will give him a kiss whenever she can plant one.  While in Tulsa, Maddie got to meet some new cats and wanted to pet and kiss all of the cats she met!