8 Months Old

Joanna Banana is 8 months old today. She's modeling an adorable little dress that I found at a garage sale for just 50 cents!

I'm in awe that we're 8 months into her first year, and we only have 4 more months to go until her first birthday.

Our little Jo has learned to wave.  She likes to wave at people from her seat in the grocery store shopping cart.  Actually, it's difficult to get very far in the grocery store.  People gravitate to her.  They love to coo and her and play with her feet.  She hams it up for people, too, by laughing and babbling at them with her big smile.  She loves to smile, and she occasionally acts bashful and hides her face from view of strangers.  She'll touch her finger tip to yours, and she bangs toys together.

Jo's working hard at learning to crawl, but hasn't had much success with it yet.  She kicks her feet and pulls with her arms.  Sometimes, she inches forward a bit.  Sometimes, she pushes herself backwards.  Most often, she just moves her body in a circle.  Joanna stands very well when I support her with her hands.  She has done this for months now, but I try not to practice it too much.  I really want her to crawl before she walks!

She is very vocal.  Her favorite sounds to make are still "B" and "M" sounds.  She still makes lots of grunting noises, and she likes to try to yell over anything loud.

Jo's warmed up a lot to her brother.  When she sees him, she smiles, and she usually laughs when he hugs her.  Oliver loves it when he can make her laugh and announces, "She's laughing!"

I'm already working hard at weaning Jo.  She's currently down to 5 nursings a day, and I hope to cut out her night time feeding this month to bring her down to 4 nursings a day.  Jo eats mostly jars of baby food, as that's what we get from WIC, and I can usually get her to eat a whole jar in a feeding these days.  Jo usually eats two jars of food a day, and then I give her a meal of finger foods, like Cheerios.  We've given Jo small amounts of peanut butter now, and she's done well with it.  I simply toast a piece of bread, and then I scrape a scant amount of peanut butter over the surface.  I dice the toast up into teeny pieces, and I give them to Jo a couple pieces at a time.  Jo loves finger foods, and she would shove them all into her mouth at once if allowed.

Sleep is going OK.  Jo naps one to two times a day.  Usually, she gets one good nap in, which lasts about 45 minutes long.  Sometimes, she surprises us by napping for an hour and a half.  She sleeps from about 8pm to 6am, getting up once to nurse.  I put her back to bed awake, which causes her to cry.  We now let her cry in her Pack 'N Play, and Andrew and I alternate going to her to soothe her every 10 to 15 minutes with soothing words and pats.  It takes about 45 minutes for her to go back to sleep on her own like that.

At 8 months old, these are Joanna's likes and dislikes:

Likes:
*Examining toys
*Banging toys together
*Opening and closing the oven door in Oliver's play kitchen set
*Eating finger foods, especially Gerber sweet potato puffs
*Air conditioning at the grocery store
*Being held
*Grabbing people's faces
*Pulling out grass and shoving it into her mouth for Mom to fish out
*Water (this includes splashing at the sink faucet, taking a bath, "swimming," or just drinking sips of tap water)

Dislikes:
*Long car rides
*Seeing someone walk away from her (especially Mommy)
*The heat

(Flashback to Oliver's 8 Month Post)