Baker Bea | 8 Months

Eight.
Eight wonderful months with our Bakey girl (as of March 8th…I’m SO behind). I really have no idea how we’ve made it through 3/4 of our first year. I guess I need to get on the ball and start thinking about Baker’s 1st birthday…yikes! I honestly feel like it was just a few short weeks ago that we welcomed her into our lives. I look back at photos from her first couple weeks here in this world and can’t believe how much she has changed and developed over the past eight months.

OUR EIGHT MONTH GAL STATS

Weight: It has to be close to 20lbs.
Birth: 8 lbs 6 oz

We don’t go back to the doctor until her nine-month appointment but she’s got to be pushing 20 lbs. Our chunkafuzz, as Cory has named her, is just. so. rolley.

I can’t stop taking pictures of these legs, ya’ll. I could just eat them up, I love them so. She’s still in size 3 diapers and can still fit 9-month clothes but we’ve pretty much moved her up to mostly 12-months. It was like overnight that she outgrew every single one of her pajamas, so to give her room to grow we bought her 12-months–they actually fit perfectly!

She has been drooling like crazy this month so we are pretty sure that she is going to get her first tooth any day! We go through at least two bibs a day and she is gnawing on anything she can get her hands on!

Baker is really beginning to develop a fun, feisty personality. She is pretty laid back most of the time but knows what she likes and doesn’t want to wait for anything!

She can also cut you a look like none other. She’s definitely like her mama in that her face shows exactly what she’s thinking.

She is such a silly little girl and thinks her Daddy is absolutely hilarious. I love hearing her giggles (and screeches) throughout our house. Baker has started this new laugh where when she thinks something is funny, she will do this little sniff/snorting thing in her nose. Her whole face scrunches up and she loves that we think it’s funny.

Long gone are the quiet days of her sweet newborn, snuggling self as she spends most of her days babbling on and on and loves for us to play in the floor with her. But she still enjoys snuggling up when she is super sleepy (and not fighting sleep).

She is the most observant baby that I’ve ever been around. I’ve had multiple people tell me that her face looks like she know exactly what we are saying to her. She saw me get her bottle out and once she sees the bottle, it better be ready for her to eat!

LOVE OK, so we know that TV time at this age isn’t really the greatest, but Baker does already have a favorite show. She LOVES to watch Octonauts on Netflix. Real talk, moms: it’s easy enough to say “no screen time” now, but in the heat of the moment when you have a sleepy, inconsolable baby screaming in your face and you need to get her calmed down, it sure is nice to have Octonauts right there on your phone to Creature Report the little chick to sleep!

She also loves to be outside. We’re still so thankful to have Cory’s grandmother and grandfather keeping Baker during the day, and they both are big on taking her outside. Apparently, Nanny and Papa have her climbing trees, going for walks in the woods, and helping in the garden already! Her Papa Doug also taught her how to do the duck face and she does it almost every time she sees him.

She still loves her bath time! She’s started playing with toys in the bath and would seriously stay in there for hours, if we let her. Not to mention, it helps her sleep much better when she’s clean!

HATE With those little paws being so busy all the time, Baker has already heard the word “no” several times. Hated it.

I know I’ve said this every month, but she really is a good baby and very easy to please. The only things she really seems to hate are the sun shining in her eyes, being hungry, and going to sleep- she doesn’t want to miss a thing!

SLEEP Well I’ve bragged on here and to everyone we know that Cory and I have had it so easy with Baker’s sleeping. Since around six weeks old, she’s always slept through the night. However, lately we’ve been having to get up with her a little more often through the night–probably a side effect of these new teeth trying to make an appearance!

She does, however, sleep really great in our bed. Something we said (pre kids) we would never do. But when both parents work full time, you do what you have to do to get some sleep. We do try to keep her routine and at least put her down in her own bed each night. Typically though, around 3:00-4:00 each morning, she winds up in our bed.

EAT After we jumped the gun a little on solids in month 7 and upset her little stomach, we came up with a better system of giving Baker solids, which made a huge difference. She loves to eat food so giving her a daily dose of baby food with some carefully-chosen bits of real food has been really easy. She also is getting better about taking water, even if sometimes it has to be in a bottle because she hasn’t quite gotten the hang of sippy cups yet. Definitely more gnawing than sipping. We plan on bumping her solid intake up, slowly, over the next few months, giving her stomach plenty of time to adjust.

PLAY Baker is still enamored with the dogs, and the dogs are still 100% not interested in being her friend. This is probably because she still just pets them a few times and then rips the hair out of their ears or squeezes their lips. In fact, we are quite sure that is the reason.

Those little hands are so busy busy! She definitely is already into everything she can reach and everything goes straight to her mouth. For some reason, she’s particularly interested in the little metal clip on her pacifier lanyard and I’m always having to stop her from biting it! She’s learning and exploring and right now, everything is a toy. She does have a few favorites though, with the top two being her little fabric keyboard and her stuffed bunny we call Bun.

She also started mimicking things we are doing this month. If we stick our tongues out, she tries to do it too. It’s so neat to see her little mind working and her lips and tongue going as she tries to do what we are doing.

Family has always been important to Cory and myself, but now that we have a child of our own, I love seeing the relationship Baker has with her grandparents and her great-grandparents.

A FEW FIRSTS DURING MONTH 8

Well it wasn’t technically Baker’s first hiking trip, since we did hike to the top of Chimney Rock with her during our Christmas trip to Lake Lure, but I guess it was her first hiking trip in SC! You could see on her face that she was loving every minute of being outdoors and taking in all the new sights, smells, and sounds.

With the weather starting to get a little nicer, we decided to take a family hiking trip to King Creek Falls, which isn’t far from home. We packed a backpack with some lunch, strapped Bakey on my chest, and away we went! We had a great time since Baker loves the outdoors so much, with the only hiccup being when I had to bend way over to duck under tree limbs and she felt like she was falling out…whoops.

We forgot her hat and it got chilly by the waterfall so we had to improvise with Daddy’s Buff.

Baker had her first Valentine’s Day!

(Daddy was her Valentine, of course), and even though she didn’t get any chocolates or Sweethearts, she still looked super cute in her little Valentine’s outfits!

 Not always a huge fan of the giant bow, though…

Whew, that Aunt Gaga is a girl of many hobbies! My little sister Gracie is always going somewhere and doing something, and this month was no different. Baker got to see her first play (that she was alert enough to watch). Gracie was a chicken and Baker just wasn’t too sure what to think.

She also went to her first volleyball game this month, also starring her Aunt Gaga!

She had her first sleep over with Aunt Gracie and her cousin Taylor…

Bakey also got to meet Ben, our friend from Rwanda, for the first time!

They were fast friends (Ben is great with kids) and it’s really nice to see Baker being introduced to the other great love that Cory and I have, which is Rwanda. It was a neat little preview of October when we get to take our girl there for the first time to meet all the rest of our friends family there!

Baker:

What can we say? Every month we think to ourselves, “man I’m going to miss her at this stage and we can’t have it back” and then you surprise us by becoming even more lovely and more fun, more intelligent and more loving with each passing week. You’re a treat to be around and adored by everyone, and we couldn’t be prouder or more blessed than to be your parents.