Month eight has been good to Quinten so far. He’s basically a professional crawler. Lucky for us, he pounds his hands into the ground as he crawls. If he wasn’t so loud, he’d get into a lot more trouble! His fat hands slam into the ground in a quick pace – slap, pound, slap, stop. That’s when you need to act fast! More than likely he’s trying to pull over a chair or sticking something in his mouth. Thankfully, Maximus doesn’t have a lot of really small toys, yet. For the most part, his toys are safe when they go into Quinten’s mouth. Not that we let him do that…
He prefers mommy over everyone else. As soon as I get home at night he either cries until I pick him up or crawls over to me and tries to climb up my legs. If we’re around other people and someone else is holding him I try to remove myself from his line of sight. He’s content as long as he doesn’t see me around. If he wasn’t so darn heavy it wouldn’t be such a chore. Sometimes a mama needs a break!
Speaking of weight, he’s 23 1/2 pounds. That’s a lot of baby! He’s a heavy 23 pounds, too. It gives me a good chance to work on my arm strength, but it’s hard for my left arm to hold him up for too long. He’s also a wiggly eight-month-old. (As if there is a non-wiggly eight month old.) His hands slap and grab faces, he bites shoulders, and he pinches and scratches. Month eight is a little rough on the rest of us. 🙂
His fifth and sixth tooth just popped through. He was a little cranky but mostly spent a couple of weeks biting. As the one on the receiving end of that, I am very glad that he’s feeling better. I tried all kinds of methods for getting him to stop biting, but he always laughed at me. I thought our nursing journey might come to an abrupt end if he didn’t stop.
Besides crawling, he’s started pulling himself up. He uses everything to help him get up: people, couches, end tables, toys, high chair, swing, and the patio door. It’s basically a heart attack every time he moves. I suppose he has some coordination if he’s able to do it, but we don’t feel like he has any.
He’s still on the same sleep cycle. It took me a while, but I finally decided that he doesn’t sleep longer than seven hours. If he wakes up a bunch before 10 or 11, then he’ll sleep through the night. If he goes to bed at 8, he gets up around 3 am. I’ve conceded with his sleep habits. I look to Maximus and realize that nothing is forever. Soon enough I will be doing everything in my power to ensure that he doesn’t get to sleep in. (Paybacks teenage Quinten, paybacks!)
He’s an eating fool. Not that we’d expect anything different based on the previous seven months. He has three meals a day of solids. Sometimes baby food and sometimes real food. It depends on what the meal is or what we’re doing. I forgot how much fun it was to feed a baby in public. Man, is he messy! It’s like he knows that is the opposite of what I want to happen. He’s very cranky when he’s hungry. He has a set of lungs and will use them to let you know he’s ready for a meal. Him yelling puts me on edge and makes me very anxious when I know he’s hungry. We try not to let that happen too often, can you tell? 😉 His public nursing has impressed me. He is very focused and doesn’t pay attention to everyone else. I’m surprised by this since his head is like a bouncy ball when he isn’t nursing. Not much goes unnoticed when he’s around.
At this point, I can hardly remember life without Quinten. I think Maximus and Wrigley feel the same way because they don’t let him out of their sight too often. Now, if only I could get them to keep him out of Wrigley’s water dish or away from the dining room chairs.
