The Strong Mama: February 2011

We celebrated a few days early because Eric is at work today. We had a babysitter and went to dinner and a movie (True Grit- rocked) for the first time since Finn was born. Thanks for watching the boy Uncle Wally!

Eric surprised me with the this awesome necklace and flowers. I love it. Thank you sweet husband!

It is called the Family Tree necklace, with an A, E, And F on the leaves. There is room for one more leaf :)

You can find it on Etsy.

I orchestrated a Valentine's Day photo shoot with my little sweethearts, Finn and Molly. Molly was a great sport as always, tolerating another holiday ribbon and me asking her to sit in one place. Finn loved the props, he especially enjoyed eating the fake flowers. The photos turned out adorably!

8 month stats:

16 lbs, 1 oz

27.5 inches

Hi Bug!

It's been a busy month in Finn-town! Here are some of the leaps and bound you've made between month 7 and 8:

Sleeping pattern: You continue to be our rock star sleeper. We are pretty consistent now in putting you to bed at 8:30. If I had to guess and average wake up time? 8:30 for a nice rounded 12 hours:) Occasionally you wake up as early as 6:30 if you're not feeling great or you just have a weird morning. Sometime as late as 10am. I LOVE that you have inherited my love of sleep!

Feeding schedule and foods you love to stuff in your face: You are eating 2 solid meals a day, around 10am, and 5pm. As you know, we never did "baby food" per say. Nothing from a jar has passed through your lips. You are still getting purees, but you are also starting to have chunkier foods. For example, I give you pieces of raw cheese to chew on, banana chunks, soups that still have little bits of vegetable and meats. It is amazing and wonderful that you are so unafraid of food. You have not rejected anything so far. You take liquid (cinnamon flavored cod liver oil every day and you slurp it like its a treat! You have had about 30 different vegetables and 20 fruits. You regularly have beef, lamb, pork, chicken, salmon, shrimp. You are quite the little Primal baby:) You snack on soaked and dehydrated nuts of all kinds (no peanuts yet), you love my homemade yogurt with fruit and chia seeds. I cook your food in pastured butter, coconut ghee, bacon far, and olive oil- lots of fat for you. Oh, and you love my almond flour pancakes!

We breastfeed 3-4 times a day, always upon awakening and before bed.

Nicknames: DUDE, bug, monk, monkey, Finner, dudappotamous, stinky, rascalpants.

Temperament: Much of the same my boy! All those smiley pictures we are always sending all over creation to everyone we know? It's because YOU ARE ALWAYS SMILING! You are so excited to try new things and you make us so happy with your joyful expressions and exuberance when you see daddy and I! Sometimes you get frustrated when things don't happen fast enough (like when we don't shovel food in with enough speed!) You bounce back quickly though from every little trial and tribulation, scary noise, or fall.

What you love the most: It would have to be bath time above all else. This month you have started getting so spastically, whole body flailing, beating the tub, excited when we put you in that water. We figured out you are big enough to just sit in a shallow tub by yourself so I don't take a bath with you every night anymore. But night after night, you get your bath! You just have a few toys in there, but they keep you busy. You lunge after your duckies, go from sitting to all fours to sprawled on your stomach, flop to your back, and all over again. You like to make as much noise as you possibly can, creating a sound that echoes all over the house, by smashing your hard toys against the side of the tub.

What makes you mad/sad: On the other water front, you don't like it when its cold. We started a baby swim class this month and the first 3 times you cried when I put you in. I got you a long sleeve shirt and trunks but they don't help. You start chattering and turning blue as soon as you hit the water. Next session we are switching to a warmer pool. You also get mad when I reprimand you for biting me while nursing, Freaking OUCH kid. And you might be a tad scared of the vacuum cleaner.

Things I’m loving most right now: How cool it is to watch you learn to be independent, more mobile, more accurate in your hand eye coordination, and the hilarious sounds you are making.

Sounds you are making: You have added a growling, Vader-esque rumble to your repertoire. You have mastered mamamama and dadadadada. You definitely say ~~mama more~~ them both equally:)

You are learning to: army crawl, creep, inchworm, belly flop, all those pre-crawling movements! (remember this is not real time and you have made some HUGE accomplishments between 8 and 8.5 months!) You stand holding onto things for as long as 5 minutes by yourself when we help you up. We are still teaching your sign language, primarily around eating. We consistently do: eat, more, please, drink, thirsty, all done, and milk. Also: hot, dog, mama, and daddy. I think they are definitely sinking in and it will be so cool when you start communicating with signs!