Avery is 8 Months Old

Avery turned 8 months old on December 10th. Wow, doesn't the time fly. My sweet girl will be a year before I know it. Yikes!

Avery is finally consistently sleeping through the night. She goes to bed at 8 pm and is usually up around 6 or 6:30. It's early but it's better than getting up multiple times in the night.

Of course all bets are off if she's getting a tooth (she now has 6). For the three days leading up to the tooth popping in it seems that she does not nap well and fights bed time too. Man, she is certainly my fussy sleeper. She has a sweet disposition regardless, but she sure doesn't seem to sleep very well.

She is continuing to eat all kinds of fruits and vegetables and we have started branching out into a lot more finger foods. We pretty much let her try anything we're eating as long as it's soft and not spicy. She's tried turkey and chicken pieces, pasta, beans, egg yolk, whole banana chunks, pear chunks and really whatever else she wants. It's fun seeing her experiment with food.

Her movement is really starting to ramp up. She can't crawl, but boy does she want to. She gets into the crawling stance and then moves her arms but then plops down. That isn't to say she isn't moving around though. She can roll all over the place and get from her belly back to sitting. She can also crawl backwards pretty far, so you certainly can leave her and expect her to stay in the same spot.

She also still really likes to stand and is pulling up more and more. She loves to hold your hands and move from them to something catty corner. So for example, if you have the play table pushed next to the couch, Avery will grab from the table to the couch and back again. She sometimes cruises too, but it's very slow. Usually she likes to just hold on with one hand. She'll also stand unsupported for a few seconds.

As you can see from the pictures, we have entered into the fabulous world of pony tails. A friend of mine told me the trick to getting pony tails to stay in baby fine hair is getting these special pony tail holders that look sort of like rubber bands for braces. They don't come loose in baby hair and then you can affix a bow to that. It's been fun.

As for babbling, she still doesn't say anything on purpose. She babbles a lot though and still screeches from time to time. Her most common sounds are, "Nuh, nuh, nuh," "Dd, dd, dd", and "Mm, Mm, Mm", "Hey, hey, hey" (It almost sounds like she's saying, "hi."). Jeff claims she says "Dada" some times, but I am not buying it. Hee hee.

Supposedly by 9 months, some babies can wave bye bye and play peak a boo by themselves, but Avery certainly is not. I think Connor starting waving at 14 months so I'm not holding my breath.

We don't know how much Avery weighs, but we believe it's about 18 pounds. We'll see at her nine month appointment in January. For now though, she is just the right size. I actually think she has stopped growing at such a rapid clip and might only be in the 50th percentile for height now, since she can still wear 9 month clothes and so I think she's about average height. She might be a little large in the weight, but she certainly doesn't look as big as Connor ever did. We shall see.

Enjoy the most recent pics of sweet little Avery.

Rolling around with my pony tail.

Hi Mommy.

Standing at my play table.

I like things with buttons and sounds. This thing is fun.

Jumping around in my excersaucer.

I'm a peach.

I sat her down in front of her sign and she wouldn't stop moving to grab it.

One picture where she's not all over the sign.

Showing off her one handed standing.

I moved the sign way far in front of her. Here she is trying to crawl to it. You're so close little girl.

I'll just plop down. I'm not too sad about it though.

Now I'm going to roll around.

The sign is mine. Ha ha!

Standing up and pressing buttons. Super fun.

I'm jolly.

Look I'm so close to crawling.