The Harper Family: 8 Months!

Lexi is 8 months old!

This past month especially has FLOWN! I felt like I JUST wrote her 7 month post!

Stats:
No official doctor visit until 9 months. We actually have her next appointment on Halloween. That should be fun.

Reflux:
Pretty rarely spits up, although sometimes after she gets up from a nap she will spit up a couple times. We've had some big ones a couple days this month. But for the most part she does really good. She even gets excited when she sees me get her medicine out of the fridge because she loves the grape flavor. We have come a long way from the battle it used to take to get medicine down. I think she will be sad when she actually goes off of it! Haha!

Eating:
She is still nursing around 5-6 times a day and goes anywhere from 2-4 hours still. She can go a while but she does like to eat before she naps so that accounts for the 2 hour time. Her daily schedule is like this...

Wakes up anywhere from 7:30 to 8:30-- most often around 8:15
Eats (nurses), Plays
10:15 (or 2 hours after waking) eats (nurses) and naps
11:45 wakes up
12:30 lunch-- food
1:45 eats then nap (or 2 hours after her waking up from first nap)
3:15 wakes up
4:00 2nd food of the day
5:00 eats- nurses
7:00 medicine
7:15 bath (every other day)
7:30 eats then bedtime
6:00ish a.m. wakes to eat then goes back to sleep until morning

She gets it honest from her parents. She loves to eat. She has eaten lots of food. I started a calendar print out of what she eats each day so that I can keep up with it and see patterns. We've dealt with some constipation again recently and I want to see exactly what she eats the days leading up to that and see if it could be something she is eating that triggers it for her. So far she has eaten apples, bananas, blueberry, prunes, peaches, pears, green beans (not her fav), squash, peas... I'm sure I'm forgetting something. She has licked Daddy's freezer pops... and LOVED it. And while we have been out eating she has licked bacon and when we made roast the other night we let her taste that (by licking it also). We tried to give her some puffs but she acted like she was choking so we will wait on those a little while longer. We've tried to give her the sippy cup some more but since she's teething she likes to chew on it and I don't think she gets the whole drinking concept. BUT she has done better. She actually drank a little of the prune juice that was in it and had to wear a bib because it gets everywhere. She is really willing to try anything food wise... even if she seems not to like it she keeps eating.

Sleeping/Napping:
She is a GREAT sleeper. Like I said in her above schedule she sleeps from 7:30 until usually 6 a.m. then eats and goes back to sleep until around 8. She rolls all over the crib and it's so funny to walk in our room and see her on the monitor and turn around and she's in a different position. She is still napping twice a day and has fluctuated a little between an hour to 1.5 hours. I usually say any nap over an hour is a pretty good one. If it's less than that I usually leave her in her crib until at least an hour before going to get her up and she usually just talks and rolls around or sits up in her crib. Rarely does she fuss or cry for us to come get her. She usually goes down really easily for naps and if she doesn't then we can tell something is bothering her.

Clothing:
She is still in mostly 6 month onesies but she is now in a good bit of 9 month as well. Still in size 2 diapers.

Things she's loving:
-Smiling at people until they look at her. We have been out several times volleyball game, dinner, grocery store, Target... and she looks at people until they look at her. And she talks to them. Cutie.
-Sitting up! She loves to play with her toys and sit up on the rug. And sit up between us while we eat dinner.
-The stroller/being outside/walks
-Being out of the house and active, around people. She is a social butterfly!

Things she's not loving:
-still the same as her 6 month post BUT we have had an epiphany!!! She still hates her car seat and she doesn't LOVE being in her bumbo seat (she tolerates it as long as she's not bored) but we took her to a restaurant and had a seat cover to strap her into (because she's so teeny) and she fussed when we strapped her in. So I took her for a little while then stuck her back into the high chair without strapping her in and she was totally fine! SOOO we think she just doesn't love being restrained in any way. She wants freedom to move. So we'll see if that proves correct.
-Back to not liking having her diaper changed

Firsts this month:
-She has had 2 teeth come up! They are poking through the bottom and not fully up yet but her bottom two are finally here!
-Going from laying down to sitting up on her own
-Sitting in a high chair
-Saying "dada" and "mama" (Daddy is working hard on "ball" and "uh-oh")
-Stuffy nose :( although it didn't last long and wasn't like a full-blown cold
-She crawls on her belly kind of army crawl- not the real thing yet.

Personality:
She is a spunky and outgoing little girl. She has started really showing us if she is not happy with us. Some of you saw my video on Instagram of her being mad at us putting her in the car seat. She balls up her fists and gets a look on her face like "I am NOT happy with you". The other thing she started doing when she is frustrated or mad is if we are trying to entertain her and give her a toy and it's not what she wants to do she hits the toy or takes it and throws it. We laugh now but Marshall says we are in for it when she gets older...She is generally very happy and everywhere we go people always comment on how smiley and content she is. She is a little attached to me these days and prefers for me to hold her a lot. If I have been holding her for a little while and I try to pass her off sometimes she will cry until I take her back. She never has a problem being left in the nursery though. It's kind of at random times that this happens. She is really happy playing by herself a lot and just going from one toy to the next although she does have a preference for some toys.

As a parent there are times when you have a million of the exact same picture (so it seems to everyone else) but you like each one for different reasons. You may think several of these look the exact same but I couldn't choose between some of them to put on here... so here they all are.