Cade Michael - 8 Months

On Thursday, my little baby turned 8 months old. As usual, we sang Happy Birthday to him and, as usual, this disturbed his brother. I thought it odd that the song triggers some uncomfortableness in Dylan, but I've recently found out that it's common for kids.

Cade's had a huge month. Just after turning 7 months old, he started working on crawling. He's a definitely crawler now. For a few weeks, he was content to just move a few feet to a toy or over to where Mike and I were sitting but over the last week or so, he's gotten much more adventurous. Not only does he go through rooms to get to us, but he also is fascinated by the cat food and will make his way over there when possible. As he gets faster and faster, we're going to be on our toes more about the food situation. And, very soon, our house will be sportin' the high style of the baby gates on the stairs. I should also note that Cade is not a "traditional" crawler. While he sometimes moves on hands and knees alone, it's much more common to see him on 2 hands, 1 knee and 1 foot or 2 hands and 2 feet in a kind of crab crawl. Those moves are pretty entertaining for us but more frustrating for him when he's wearing footy pajamas or socks....darned hard wood floors are slippery!

However, Cade was not content to just get crawling down this month. At 7.5 months old, that boy pulled to stand! He's quick on this mobility milestone thing. I'm a little in awe of his quick progress through these steps. Very soon he'll be a cruiser and I don't even want to think about how soon we'll have a walker on our hands.

I mentioned on his 7 month post that he loves other kids and babies. That has definitely continued. One of my favorite things to witness is Cade "reading" the Sleep book. It's a baby book that stays in our bathroom because it is very entertaining to him and keeps him enthralled while we're getting ready in the morning. It consists of pictures of babies in the different stages of getting ready for bed. He'll look at the pictures, grin and then start giggling. It's seriously the cutest thing ever.

Cade With Our Friend Elsa

He's So Happy To Be Hanging With Her

While we struggle to get Dylan to eat anything other than graham crackers, we're blissfully reminded daily that babies are eager to eat. With Cade, he'll eat just about anything. Before this month, we mostly stuck to pureed baby food, but we've been giving him more and more "real" food and he's been gobbling it up. Of the mush variety, he's been introduced to chicken, beef and corn. While we've been eating, we've shared real food with him including tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, broccoli and bread. He really likes to feed himself and has been working hard on perfecting his pincer grip. Still not really consistent with it, but he is good enough to have fed himself puffs (baby snack), whole peas and black beans.

Cade is enjoying the world of toys that make noise. He's figured out how to make music by pushing the buttons on a couple of baby toys and loves to push the buttons on Dylan's computer. One of his other favorite toys at the moment is a kid's size frying pan that makes all kinds of fun noises when he bangs it on stuff. Cade might turn into a tech guy like his Daddy because one of the things he crawls quickly too is the receiver for the tv. We have to make sure the glass doors are shut on the tv stand all the time. And he loves the remotes. We took the batteries out of one so he could play with it because he just loves the feel of the buttons.

And finally, sleep. For once, I didn't feel the need to put it at the top of the post because even though it's only been a small amount of time, he's finally consistent with it. He went through about a week of getting up at 5am (which was awful) but his sleeping hours are primarily 8 to 6 or 6:30 am. While I still am not getting much more than 6-7 hours a night consistently, I'm definitely feeling more rested than I have in a while. Having said that, the dark circles under my eyes seem to have taken up permanent residence and (as Mike can attest) I always seem tired. I remember not feeling like I was really getting enough sleep until Dylan was about 15 months old so I guess I'm in a normal "having a baby" position right now.  

Cade Michael - 8 Months

"Hey Guys, Watch This!"

My New Trick

Cool Huh?!?

"I Think It's Pretty Fun"