8 Months Old!

Mr Man is 8 months old! 8 MONTHS! How did he get so big? If I were going back to work in the usual 1 yr, I'd only have 4 months left! But lucky me gets to take off until September! I'm glad I get more time with my beautiful baby boy.

What's new? We're back on food. He is ok with carrots, but he's not too fond of them. We just tried chicken and he seems to like it, and so far, he seems to be ok with that too (but really, who is allergic to chicken?). I'm getting a lot of flack from those-who-I-shall-not-name about only feeding him one food. My doctor realizes he won't be getting many nutrients, thus the recommendation for extra vitamins. I was starting to question things a bit until I met someone who went through the same thing. Her husband is very allergic to many foods, so they were told to do only one food for 2 weeks. Now she's 9 months old and eating lots of things. So there is hope, and I'm not crazy. I'm not exactly doing 2 weeks. I think that's a bit of overkill, but I'm definitely doing a good long week to make sure he's ok with any foods.

Other than the food struggle, we're struggling with sleep. Between 4 and 6 months he was sleeping through the night from 11-8. Ok, so he was going to bed a bit late, but he was sleeping for 9 hours straight, and I was able to sleep, so I didn't care! Cue 6 month shots, teeth, illness, and solids. Everything went straight in the trash. Naps are hell. He used to go down pretty much awake and talk himself to sleep. He'd even sleep for 45 mins - 1 hr sometimes. Now it's a 30-45 min struggle of rocking and screaming before he'll take a 30 min nap. And sometimes I just can't get him to nap no matter what I do. I don't know if he's overtired, not tired enough, teething, having tummy trouble... I just don't know. I've asked everyone I can think of for advice and most people say the same thing: he needs a consistent naptime/bedtime routine. Well, I've been doing the same routine for naps and bedtime since 3 months....

Getting M to bed is tricky as well. The last few nights we've been lucky and he's been in bed by 9 or shortly after. Much improved over his 10-11 bedtime. But he's fussy and cranky and constantly on and off the boob. Maybe his fussiness is telling us he needs an even earlier bedtime? Maybe my milk supply is dropping? Eventually we get him to bed. But I know it's only for a short time. Like clockwork, every night he's crying by 12 am. Then he's up every 1-2 hours, sometimes 3 hours until 7 when he's usually up for the day. I have no idea why he's waking up that often. I don't know if he's really hungry. He always eats and usually falls right back asleep. Maybe he just doesn't know how to self soothe? But how do I teach him that? He won't take a pacifier unless it's to chew on, but that usually just keeps him awake instead of putting him to sleep. I tried a wet washcloth, which worked once, but didn't keep him from waking up. I really don't want to try the "cry it out" method. He gets really worked up and coughs and chokes and arches his back with tears streaming down his face and it's really hard to get him to calm down. I'm at the end of my rope. I'm really tired, almost more tired than when he was a newborn. In fact, by the time he was 6 weeks old, he was only waking up once or twice. I think this is worse, especially knowing he can sleep through the night.

I don't know what happened. Maybe he's just going through so many developmental changes that he's all mixed up? Maybe he's trying to crawl in his sleep, or he just hasn't learned how to fall back asleep on his own when he wakes up. Maybe he's just really overtired from not napping enough during the day. I have all sorts of ideas of why it's happening, but no idea how to fix it. I'm really rambling and venting here, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears!

Enough rambling for the day. Time for a cute picture! His monthly pictures are getting harder. He just won't sit still! He's always leaning forward and grabbing things. He can go from his bum to his belly, but always gets tripped up over his one leg. He'll rock on hands and knees and slides backwards, but he has yet to figure out how to get where he wants to go. He's getting there, and he's very vocal, but nothing that actually sounds like anything. Not sure what "ba ba bwa bwa ba" means, but he says that a lot. I just realized that I haven't blogged about our Mexico trip. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow, because that was a lot of fun. For now, his 8 month picture!