Eight Months of Eddie

Eddie is eight months old and such a great little boy. This month he cracked the secret of crawling, and is becoming very adept at transitioning from a crawl to a sitting position and back again. The cats have learned that he can chase them if they don't move quickly enough. I'm not sure what they think of this new development.

Now that he has some control over his activities, he is much less prone to frustration. He will still whinge a bit when he's tired but for the most part he happily plays with his toys (and some things that aren't toys: a whisk, a potato masher, the metal lid to a cookie tin). He loves outings to stores and other places and continues to charm all the ladies, particularly when he's riding in shopping carts.

He is starting to pull up on things a little bit, but not reliably. He has two and a half teeth (an upper one is in the process of coming out) and a fourth one looks about to break the surface of his gums. He enjoys experimenting with his voice - right now he likes to say "kih!" - and his repertoire of solid foods is steadily growing. He's started meats via some turkey, and right now we're carefully testing the possibly-allergen range of things that an under-one is allowed to have: egg yolks (but not the whites), soy, and non-milk dairy products like yogurt and cheese. He's had some egg the last couple of days. So far, so good, as far as we can tell.

Potty training is continuing to go well, though as his guts adjust to the new range of foods we have been having some adventurous diapers lately. And while he does not yet sleep through the night without waking, the wake-ups are becoming fewer, less frequent, and as always he quickly goes back to sleep after we take care of whatever he needed.

Martin adds:

When Edward was born I was resigned to the idea of having to change poopy diapers. As things developed, and we started potty training at five weeks after we noticed that he frequently peed when his diaper was removed, the number of dirty diapers dropped off. Edward doesn't like pooping his diaper. He doesn't even like peeing his diaper, though that happens, mostly at night, and during the day if we don't spot the signals (or he's too busy playing and doesn't give any). We'll usually get just one or two poopy diapers a week. Ed frequently has a poop first thing in the morning after waking, so if we hear him wake and get him on the potty within a few minutes of waking all is well.