Sunday, May 1, 2011

Maya's 8th month

During Maya's 8th month (late Feb to mid March), she started to become a lot more active. After starting to crawl last month, she really mastered it this month, and has started to explore the whole house. Before, she confined herself to the living room at first, and then slowly explored the rest of the house. Now, she is so comfortable going from room to room that you can put her in one room and in 10 seconds she'll be 2 rooms away. When she really want's to be somewhere, she can get there almost as fast as you can. This month she really liked playing in her bedroom.

The previous month, Maya was pulling herself up and standing by other objects from time to time. By her 8th month, she was doing it all the time, everywhere she could get. Only now she wasn't just standing to stand, but she was doing it to get whatever she could reach on a table, bookshelf, the entertainment center, etc. First it started by grabbing video games off the entertainment center. Then it was grabbing remotes, papers, etc off of the end table. Later it was pulling as many dvds off the shelf as possible and making an absolute mess. As quickly as you could put them away, she'd pull just as many off. It didn't take long for us to give up on trying to keep the DVDs in alphabetical order.

Also, on the topic of standing, not only had Maya gotten good at pulling herself up and standing along object, but she's started to develop the balance and strength to hold herself up unsupported. In the week before she turned 8 months old, she started to stand up for 1 or 2 seconds on her own. You would have to stand her up and get her balanced just right, but she could do it.

Of course, as good as she became at standing and crawling, she also now had become a very good sitter. It's sort of funny that it really took her longer to master sitting than it did crawling or standing.

Maya started to eat her first real foods (as opposed to baby food) this month. The first one for her to tackle was bananas. We first just mashed up small pieces with our fingers and let her chew on it. Then we switched to mashing it up with a fork, mixing it with some rice or oatmeal, and making that an entire meal. She loved the flavor immediately, but she had a little trouble with the texture at first. However, by the second time she had it for a meal, she seemed to do alright with it.

Maya broke the 16 lbs mark this month, dropping her to just below the 25th percentile. Her height at the 8 month old mark was, for the third month in a row, 27 inches tall. We had to have over-measured in one of the previous months.

I installed a baby swing in the basement this month, and Maya really loves to swing in it. She's not freaked out by really big swinging motions either. It seems she loves the excitement of it (just like she loves when I toss her in the air and catch her).

In Maya's crib, we've given her a couple of toys to play with and snuggle with: her puppy dog Ikea (named after the store he came from), and her glow-seahorse (like a glow-worm). The glow-seahorse lights up and plays music when you squeeze the tummy. A few times, we've turned it on when putting her to be and let it soothe her to sleep. However, on one occasion, she turned it on by herself. I woke up early in the morning (maybe 5am...I don't recall for sure) and heard the seahorse playing. I went in there and she was snuggled up to it, staring at it, making a little bit of noise. She soon went back to sleep.

Finally, this month Maya developed a few new humorous traits. First, she often pants when she get excited. Second, she loves to play in and destroy paper. If you lay a stack of papers on the floor, she'll crawl over and make an absolute mess of it all.


Once again, here are a few of the best photos from this month, but you can see more in the gallery at http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/maya_8months


Getting into the video games


Sleeping with Dolly


In her basement swing


Playing in her crib with her glow-seahorse


In the cat bed (where she doesn't belong)



Maya playing with papers (7 months old)





Maya walking with her dinosaur (7.5 months old)





Maya in her basement swing (7.5 months old)





Maya crawling to her bottle (7.5 months old)

Although I posted the army-crawling version of this in the 7 month blog, I thought I'd post the updated version with her really crawling.





Maya playing in her room (8 months old)

This video is a bit longer than the others I've previously posted. While it might not have the same sort of humorous moments the other videos do, this one captures the general idea of her playing in her room by herself and how she keeps herself entertained.

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