Someone tell me HOW time has escaped me and my baby is now 8 months old?! It still feels like yesterday that I was pregnant now she only has 4 months left till she’s a year (& 3 months till I return to work…)- please stop growing so fast.

A lot has happened (again) this month – it’s pretty normal for babies under a year to be constantly working on a new skill of some sort. This month has been primarily motor for us (check out my recent post on motor milestones here).

Let me tell you a little bit more about what’s been going on in little Maggie’s life…

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She is pushing up from her tummy to a seated position!

If you read my update for last month, you’ll know that Maggie has been sitting independently for awhile now – however before I had to place her there. Now you look away for 3 seconds and she is suddenly seated on her own! She looks so proud when it happens – it’s adorable.

She can also flip back down to crawl really quickly so it’s basically impossible to get her to sit still. I have to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider or Wheels on the Bus to get her to look at the camera now – and even that is only for a few moments.

She is showing us what she wants!

She’s been reaching out for toys for months now, but she started recently reaching out for me or my husband to pick her up or hold her. It’s SO cute.

She has been wanting to be held more – almost like newborn stage level again. Apparently that is something that can happen during this sixth leap though. I’m not always sure I believe in leaps – however we actually match up quite well with this one. She is definitely categorizing things and examining objects (even dog hair) a lot (but I think that actually started last month).

Some other items on the Wonder Weeks milestone check list for this leap that match up are:

• that she seems to ‘notice’ when her hands are dirty now (she even holds them out for me and lets me wipe them);
• she is doing more imitation (I shared a recent video of her on IG of her shaking her head ‘no’, imitating me);
• making silly faces in the mirror (again – this has been happening for awhile);
• and definitely showing us how she is feeling more clearly!

She doesn’t ask me to sing but I do anyways – she seems to enjoy it? Maybe?

… as I mentioned, she will nod her head yes and shake her head no.

This seems to be mostly imitation or mimicry – but she also does it now without us doing it and she will shake her head no when we say no. She also seems to be understanding what “no” or “don’t” mean – I try not to say no too often (because I’m scared then I’ll get it said back to me for like 3 years straight in the near future haha!!) but as Maggie has an obsession with finding all the cords in our house… it has to be used at some points (combined with me running over and scooping her up super fast!).

She is definitely a bigger fan of “no” than “yes” so far… yay…

Our biggest motor milestone: She is army crawling!

This was an exciting one for me (and her). I’ve been excited for this but also partially dreading it because it means the days of being able to plop her down and sort of multitask are no longer as easily done.

I was happy that I attended Kasha’s webinar through the Parenting Series on motor milestones because she actually spoke about how to set up a safe play area for mobile babies. So I fixed our play space a bit, got a few new entertaining simple toys (including kitchen utensils that Maggie loves right now) and that has been working out well for us since she started moving around more.

I also (coincidentally) used her tips to encourage movement for Maggie – like leaving toys a little bit out of reach. My cell phone was actually the trigger that got her to take those first few inches forward – figures.

Anyway – now I have a moving baby it feels like a whole other ball game! She hasn’t started reciprocal (knee) crawling yet, but she’s up on her days many times a day so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

She has been sleeping through the night again – yay!

Our 7 month struggle with sleep seems to be behind us (finally), for the most part. A day or two here or there that aren’t great still happens with teething, but it’s definitely a lot better. She is consistently sleeping about 5-8 hours through the beginning of he night and only waking up once before 530-6 to eat. She will also go back to sleep if she wakes up at 530-6, sometimes for several hours!

If your little is struggling with sleep I highly recommend checking out my chat with Cayla, the paediatric sleep specialist and also checking out her instagram. She does great videos on her stories to help with common issues – like how to put baby down in their crib when they need that contact to transfer.

One thing sleep related that has been a bit challenging is the one time Maggie wakes up, she can sometimes be hard to put back down. Cayla’s video actually helped me a lot with this because I was able to maintain contact as I laid her down – that’s saved us a bunch of times recently.

White noise has also helped us immensely. We use Alexa for it – it has an app for it and will loop all night!

Oh yeah – all that teething resulted in one tooth!

All our struggles recently with sleep, eating, crankiness.. we finally got a tooth as a reward! One bottom tooth that is as sharp as a dagger… Maggie was putting my hand in her mouth and I felt pain! I knew right away it was a little tooth!

Now to just go through this over and over till they all arrive…

She is eating so much solids all of a sudden!

Maggie showed interest in solids pretty early so, with the ok from our doctor, we started them around 5.5 months. However, food before one is just for fun – so she was pretty much tasting things except for the few items she has really liked (banana, sweet potato, baby “cheetos” (she likes mild cheddar but they have other flavours), and perogies!).

The past week or so she has been ravenous though – she will eat everything I give her pretty much – whole aero root cookies, all her egg serving, and more. I’m thinking all this development is working up her appetite – so I won’t worry if she goes back to baseline after, however this could very well be her new norm too. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Can’t wait to share more of her growth next month!