Levi is Eight Months Old

Age of Baby: 8 months

Size of Baby:

• Weight: 19 lbs 13 oz (up to the 65th percentile), + 1 lb 13 oz from last month
• Length: 28 inches (down to the 59th percentile), + 0.5 inch from last month
• Head circumference: not measured

Levi is still wearing a size 3 diaper. He has been wearing 6-9 month, or 6-12 month clothes. He is wearing size 6-12 month shoes.

Immunizations:

None this month.

Doctor's Visit Summary:

None this month.

Picture of Baby:

Here is Levi's 8-month picture in the 12-month onesie. I have decided that "Hoss Baby," or "Chins," may be more appropriate nicknames for this guy than "Tiny"! Ha! He will definitely be the earliest of the 4 to hit 20 pounds!! But look at those adorable chins. So stinkin' cute.

And here is a comparison of all four of the boys at eight months. Levi flew past the others this month for weight, and is still 2nd for height. Ethan was 28.5 inches long and weighed 18 lbs 8 oz. Noah was 27 inches long and weighed 17 lbs 13 oz. And tiny little Amos was 27 inches long and weighed just 16 lbs 0 oz. While the others were starting to thin out at this point, Levi is not. Ha! I attribute that to a combination of eating everything in sight and not moving as much as big brothers were at this point. Ethan was cruising at 6 months and walking by 9 months, while Levi hasn't even started cruising yet. Levi definitely continues to have his own look, but I think he's actually starting to favor big brother Ethan more now. It's hard to tell in this picture, but oftentimes he has similar facial expressions and he smiles with his eyes (smizing, if you will) like Ethan does. Tyra Banks would be proud. ;)

Accomplishments this Month:

• First swim in the pool
• Self-feeding table food
• Crawling on his knees
• Pulling up on furniture

The neighborhood pool opened up by Memorial Day here, so Levi was able to experience his first swim! That boy LOVES water. He is normally content to just float around the pool in his little baby float, but he really loves being held so he is able to splash up a storm! Daddy likes to put on his goggles for that as it gets a little wild. Haha!

I'm not really sure at what point it happened (yep, 4th baby problems), but we must've grown tired of feeding him purées. So, we started letting him have little tastes of table food - the stuff we were having for dinner. Oops! I know we need to be a little cautious with what we give him, as he still doesn't seem to be able to tolerate getting some forms of dairy through my milk, so I've been avoiding giving him anything with milk, cream or cheese yet. But, he seems to be doing really well with managing to eat pretty much anything we put in front of him, or into his mouth. Maybe that has something to do with the almost 2 pounds he's packed on this past month?? Hahaha! He hasn't met a food he hasn't liked yet, which is pretty amazing. He's had things like cajun quinoa with ground turkey and bell peppers, pasta, burgers with zoodles, blueberry pancakes, biscuits, scrambled eggs, etc. I know I'm forgetting lots of things, but you get the idea. He really loves sharing my morning oatmeal with me. I can't blame him since it's delicious. I've had to start making more now because he was getting mad when his bowl ran out! LOL. He'll still eat purées if that's all we have for him, but he is definitely loving trying anything he can get. He actually really loves eyeing our coffee, too, but I have to draw the line somewhere. ;) It is amazing though that he's eating all of this with no teeth yet! I guess he's just really good at gumming everything. :)

Levi has still been dragging himself (scooting) all over the place this past month, but by the end of his 7th month, he started actually crawling some, too! He still prefers to scoot, because he is much faster at it, but he can crawl now as well. Along with the crawling, he has started to pull himself up on the furniture. Sadly, he likes using the stone fireplace to do this, which kind of scares the crap out of me a bit, even as a veteran mom now. I picture him cracking his head on the edge as he falls over, so I normally quickly rescue him and put him somewhere a bit safer. So yeah, I'm pretty busy now!

Like I mentioned above, we're still waiting on those bottom two teeth to poke through, but I swear it really will be any day now. I'm hoping that's the reason he is still waking at night so much, too. It would be incredible if those teeth would just come through and he'd start sleeping through the night. Is that too much to ask??

An even rougher month in the sleep department, I think? Levi was still getting up at least once, usually two times a night. One week, he was waking three times a night again. I felt like I had a newborn again! :( He has started to get a bit better again, so I'm hoping we're going in the right direction now. Sleep deprivation is no joke. He still goes to bed between 8 and 9 pm and sleeps until 8 or 9 am. He still normally gets a bit of a cat nap in the mid-morning when he nurses, but he's also taking an afternoon nap of about 2-3 hours in his crib. I've continued to nurse him every 2-3 hours during the daytime for 10-25 minutes. He eats about 7 times total in a 24-hr period.

I can't believe that next month's update will mean that we're 3/4 of the way through his first year!?! Insanity.