Conor’s 8 Month Update

It’s official – we’ve entered the phase with Conor where he just cannot sit still. He wriggles and squirms and jumps around and refuses to be held like a baby. He wants to be sitting up at all time so he can see everything that’s going on! He’s trying to form words and he’s certainly found his voice, trying to yell things at random people as they walk past…I’m pretty sure he gets very confused why they never reply. The grabbing phase has well and truly begun…hair, necklaces, clothes, buttons (resulting in embarrassing flashing incidents for me). You name it, he’ll grab it!

Milestones: Conor is sitting up all by himself now and he flat out refuses to lie down most of the time – he gets very frustrated if he is confined to lying back in his stroller! He’s developing into a little dancer, bopping his head from side to side whenever he hears music or when you sing to him. He’s sleeping through the night without waking up at all. Rolling is his preferred mode of transport but he’s beginning to crawl more nowadays. He stands any chance he gets and I have a feeling he’ll try and go straight from rolling to full on walking! ha ha. He is becoming a lot more dextrous now and can hold his own bottle to his mouth and pick up biscuits and the like without any trouble. He now also has two teeth clearly coming through on the bottom which doesn’t really seem to be causing him any problems at all! He recognises his name now as whenever you say it, he turns around and looks at you.

Sleep: His sleep schedule has been the same for a couple of months now and I’m pretty happy for it to stay that way! I have developed a good routine during the day and the only time his sleep becomes disturbed at night is if he has missed naps during the day. Wherever possible I try to keep things consistent for him. That’s not always possible as there will always be times when we will be out of the house and he is distracted by things and just won’t sleep. But at the moment his routine is still to get up at 7:30am, nap at 11am, up at 1pm, nap at 4pm, up at 5:30pm then he has his bath, bottle and goes to bed at 7:30pm. That’s how we work it and it seems to keep everyone happy!

Best Moment: The best moment would have to be when we bought his new playpen from Amazon which you can view here. I can’t rave about this playpen enough – it’s huge (1.2m across), it looks good, it’s incredibly easy to put together, it’s sturdy and it comes with a washable mattress lining. It has an average rating of 5 stars on Amazon and that doesn’t happen very often! Now that Conor is getting so mobile, it’s just fantastic to have somewhere spacious to keep him safe where he can play with all his toys. I can get on with other things and I know he’s safe in there – that gives you so much more freedom and peace of mind when you’re running around trying to get a million things done. It’s definitely in my top 5 must have items for a baby over 6 months!

Worst Moment: I struggle with this section with every update because no matter how much I wrack my brain, I can’t come up with anything! I’m forever saying to people that I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I omit all the bad stuff just to make Conor look perfect. But he rarely gets cranky and if he does, it’s for about 2 minutes and he’s over it. He wakes up every single morning with a smile and a giggle, he’s so laid back, he is happy just entertaining himself a lot of the time, he takes no more than 5 minutes to go to sleep, he eats with no trouble. I’m really trying to think of something…I’m guessing he’s probably going to be a nightmare when he hits 2 years old because at the moment, he’s just an absolute angel.

Health: The only thing we’ve had slight issues with in the past month is the transition to solid foods. He has been getting constipated which I’m told is pretty normal when you switch to new foods so we’ve been trying to make sure he stays hydrated. He really doesn’t like drinking plain water but I really try to get him to drink it, so I add a touch of pure unsweetened apply juice and that seems to make it more palatable for him.

Eating: He’s now down to 4 bottles of formula a day and 4 portions of solids. Some days he has more of an appetite and I generally just keep feeding him until he loses interest. He’s now used to the solid foods in a smooth puree form but he’s still getting used to the more textured stuff which sometimes he finds a little strange (I’m guessing by the funny faces he pulls). I try to introduce new things to him every week and he’s now started to eat rusks, biscuits and rice cakes. He makes an unholy mess with them but he seems to enjoy it!

Things I want to remember: The sound of his little giggle when the dogs make him laugh, or when you tickle him – it’s just the best and most beautiful sound to me. It’s like music to my ears and even if you’re not in the best mood, it just lifts your spirits. If he’s laughing then all is good in my world. It just makes my heart swell and makes me feel so blessed to have such a happy child who brings so much happiness to so many people.