Since Andrew is 8 months old today (and growing too fast!) I figured it’d be a good time to do a recap on what he’s been up to for the past few months.

He has six teeth now. The first two (bottom) came in at the very beginning of May and the other four (top) seemed to pop up overnight all at the same time about a month ago. Teething hasn’t been easy for us. At least that’s one thing we expected since nothing has really been easy for us. I’m glad to have a break right now, though, as there don’t seem to be any signs of anymore teeth to come in the near near future.

About a month and a half ago while we were visiting my family in Pennsylvania, he started to get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth. I was surprised to see these beginning signs of crawling since we hadn’t even seen him attempt to sit up on his own yet. We thought any day he’d be on the move, but it took until a few days ago for him to finally figure out just what he needed to do with his arms. Before that, he started to get up on his hands and feet and also began pulling up on things. He loves climbing. Just a week ago, I noticed that there were bite marks on the crib railing and suspected that he’d started pulling himself up on that. The next day when I went in to get him in the morning, I was met by a baby standing up on his knees, arms dangling out over the rail with paint chips all around his mouth! Let’s just say that his crib mattress has since been lowered to the second-to-lowest setting and will, sooner rather than later, be on the lowest setting because he’s now stretching up to get to the rail again. We thought there was something wrong with him because he was doing all of this stuff, but still hadn’t mastered the crawling thing. He could do it vertically, why not horizontally? I’m telling you this baby is weird! I don’t know what changed the other day, but we had him on the floor that morning after he ate and he just took off! We’ve not been able to keep up with him since! So far he loves to go after the cats, their toys and every wire in sight. With crawling, he’s now sitting up wonderfully on his own, a skill I never thought he was going to master!

I always told everybody that once this kid could crawl, our problems would be solved. That seems to be the case because Andrew’s been SO HAPPY now that he can entertain himself. I think a big part of his fussiness before was the boredom that came with being immobile. That and he seems to be the typical ADHD boy that can’t keep his attention on any one thing for more than two minutes.

Also to our surprise, the same day he started crawling, he began babbling “mom mom mom mom mom”. I’m sure he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he’s on the right track now for his first word! I just think it’s funny because it sounds more like it’s going to end up “mum” rather than “mama”.

Other than that, he’s been eating his fruits, veggies and we just moved on to some meat. The really odd thing he likes is lemons. I randomly decided to let him try a piece from a lemon I had in my water one day we were eating out and I was shocked to not see his face squish up! I love lemons, too, so I guess he gets it from me! He seems to have a taste for bland or sour things.