8 (Plus) Months

I’m behind on updates so I figured I’d start with the most expired news and work my way up.

The girls turned eight months old (almost two weeks ago…woops) and they’re changing by the day.

Milestones

Both have been teething for a couple of weeks now, culminating in the appearance of Althea’s first top tooth! Elise’s teeth are torturing her, visible right under the gums but refusing to poke through.

Both girls have  sitting and crawling DOWN. Althea continues to show her gymnastic ability by standing up pretty regularly now. I’m starting to find her standing in her crib after naps now.

Althea standing in her crib

Babbling is crazy-fun frequent, with tons of sounds — ta, ba, dada, ma, pa, th, ch, derr, and lots of vowel sounds. Althea’s taken to shrieking too. Fun, right?

We’ve reluctantly given up our beloved Double Snap ‘n Go stroller and infant seats and traded up to a big-girl stroller and car seats. We like our new Jeep Traveler Tandem and we opted for the Graco My Ride 65 car seats — it has the highest rear-facing weight limit at 40 pounds, goes to 65 pounds forward-facing, has DOUBLE cup holders bitches ‘cuz that’s how we roll, is super soft and cushy, and was a technically-reasonable-but-still-painful-to-shell-out $150. (Each, of course. Yeah, ouch.)

New car seats, yo

New stroller

Sleeping

Sleeping has been . . . rough. After months of sleeping through the night really well, they reverted back to newborn behavior, waking two, three, sometimes four times a night. Of course, this has coincided with the teething, crawling, standing up, increased babbling, etc. We’ve gone back to two consecutive nights of sleeping through again, so hopefully we’ve overcome this bump.

I wish I had known not to get so smug about babies who sleep through the night because just when everything’s golden, they go and start growing up on you.

Still taking two good naps in the morning and afternoon, with an occasional evening catnap if they’re cranky.

Eating

The girls nurse five to six times a day and are now eating solids for breakfast and dinner. We started meats last week, which has resulted in stink-awful poop. Then again, more solid poop means the end of blowouts. Gotta love that.

While I love love love breastfeeding, I have to admit that I’m pretty much over it. I would like to have my body back for a bit. I just want to make it to one year so I don’t have to buy any formula, then I hope to start the weaning process. At the same time, the thought of weaning, of not seeing those four bright eyes peering up at me, of not having their tiny hands exploring my face, arms and chest, of not being needed – kind of breaks my heart.

To complicate things, I think the girls are now grown-up enough to like breastfeeding. Sure, they’ve always liked it in the sense that it’s warm and snuggly and delicious, but now I think they’re aware enough of what they like and dislike to show a desire to  nurse when they’re not hungry. They climb on me and whine and tug at my shirt, even after eating. I feel bad to turn them away. I feel like a bad mom for not being a human pacifier. But . . . well, I refuse to be a human pacifier. It’s rough. Sigh.

Sizes

We’re just about ready to move into 9-12 month clothes. Waaahhhh, another expense. Can they just go naked till they’re ready for school? Still in size three diapers. I’ve gone back to cloth diapering part-time, actually. That’s another post altogether. I’m guessing they weigh about 16.5 pounds now.

In other news, we did finally get a Big Badass Camera. We opted for the Canon Rebel EOS xsi. Love it! Very easy to use. Here are some recent photos.

Althea 8 months

Elise 8 months

Bookends