Nathaniel's eighth month can be summarized by sitting up, eating purees and eczema. He figured out how to sit up confidently on his own right after he saw Jonathan at my parents' house. Who says peer pressure is always a bad thing? He very rarely falls over now, and he loves to sit up, grab for toys, and eat them. He especially likes to chew on Peter Rabbit's ears.
He also likes to try to pull up and eat the grass:
Amelia and Megan still love to hold him, but he refuses to be held like a baby anymore. Instead, he wants to sit up in their laps:
He would rather play with his sisters than be hugged and squeezed by them, though:
And he is starting to like a very gentle type of rough-housing with them:
He is happily eating all kinds of baby food now, and has turned into such a neat eater that sometimes I don't even make him wear a bib. He hates bibs. His favorite puree is probably pear, and his least favorite is definitely green beans.
He also loves to eat Puffs; he became interested in those after seeing Natalie gobble them up at the Botanic Gardens in St. Louis. She shared a few, and he tried them and decided they were tasty.
The girls still love to feed him, and while they are getting better at feeding him with a spoon, they are especially delighted to get to give him puffs. Nathaniel even has Megan trained to put the puffs right in his mouth so he doesn't have to pick them up himself. It is so cute.
Poor Nathaniel had bad eczema this month. It started getting worse at Mom and Dad's in late June, his upper chest was dry, patchy and red, and I'm sure it itched him because he kept trying to scratch it. In addition to being my pinkeye and strep throat expert, Becky is also my eczema expert, and she gave me the recommendations from her pediatric dermatologist. So, Nathaniel has had daily baths with Eucerin sensitive baby wash, and has been slathered in Cetaphil and petroleum jelly twice a day for the last month. His skin is looking a lot better now, and it doesn't seem to bother him any more. I also had removed gluten from his diet, so I will reintroduce that pretty soon and see if his skin gets worse. Thankfully, Nathaniel really likes baths, and is happy to splash and play in the water every day.
He is starting to show interest in crawling, but so far he has only figured out how to scoot himself backwards. He can't quite get his knees under himself yet. You can see him trying to scoot his knees up in this photo:
He gets kind of angry when I put him down for tummy time and then put his toys just out of reach.
So then he rolls over, scoots himself backwards, gets himself turned completely around, and pulls the blanket towards him until he can get to the toys he wants. He's resourceful!
He helped me with the laundry today by tasting Daddy's socks to make sure they were clean. Thankfully they were!
His baby hair almost completely fell out, and now a new set of hair is growing in. You can see the hair on the top of his head, but the back is still mostly bald. This means that you can barely see the bald spot he got from scooting around on his head. His hair is growing in blond, with maybe a hint of red.
Let's see.... what else? He is wearing 9 month clothes, has no teeth yet, weighs somewhere above 17lbs, and has been going through a stage of waking up 3 times a night for the past few nights. I don't know why, maybe he's teething?
I love all these photos. He is so cute! I also really love the baby laughter video. Baby laughs are the best!
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