8 months Old!

At eight months old Elle is more fun than ever! She's become way more expressive- doing lots of babbling, and even trying to "sing" along with us. My favorite are the "conversations" that Elle and Madi have together. They'll go back and forth with screams, grunts, laughs, etc. It makes for great entertainment in the car! Elle really is such a crack up. She's just so silly and so easily makes us laugh- all the time!

Elle's possessive instincts kicked in this past month. She no longer willingly let's Madi take toys away from her. If it's something Elle's playing with, and Madi (or even Spencer or I) take it away, she'll let us know that she wants it back. I'm glad to see that she's learning to stick up for herself.

I've been happy to see that Elle takes after her sister with her love for books. She gets super excited about story time especially if we're reading one of her favorites. We were at the Children's Museum in NC, reading some of the books in the "baby area", when I handed Elle a board book that we have at home. She started squealing, kicking her legs, and grabbing for the book. Here she is- showing the page to one of her favorite books.

Unlike her sister, Elle loves watching movies! Since Madi doesn't really care about movies and looses interest quickly, we mostly stick to "Baby Einstein" and "Signing Time". It's been fun watching Elle's interest peak with signing. When I feed her I always stop to sign "more" near the end of her meal. For some reason she thinks it's hilarious. She'll always give me the biggest smile and then laugh like I'm asking her a funny question. I'm pretty sure she's catching on though.

Since my last update, I'm happy to report that Elle now has her bowel movements completely under control. I am still careful with what I feed her though. I've stuck to oatmeal cereal along with her regular fruits (peaches, prunes, and pears) and vegetables (peas and green beans). It was just recently that I branched out to feeding Elle "people food". I've completely forgotten what foods to start when. I know I've definitely gone slower with Elle than I did with Madi. At this age I was grinding up our meals for Madi- something I'm looking forward to starting with Elle this month.

As for sleeping- a couple weeks ago Elle finally dropped her third nap, making 6pm her regular bedtime. Luckily with the time change I've been able to push it to 7pm (cause I'd much rather have her waking up at 7 than 6am). She still takes short naps- usually an hour in the morning and an 1-2 hours in the afternoon. But by bedtime she's exhausted and sleeps great! She'll wake up in the early morning (somewhere around 5am) to eat and then goes back to sleep for another hour or two (depending on when her bedtime was). Hopefully this coming month I'll be able to break Elle of that early morning feeding. She really ought to be sleeping 12 hours straight. But then again it's nice to have someone to wake me up and get me started with my day. When Elle wakes up at just the right time, I nurse her, put her back to bed, and then get my morning work-out out of the way. Those are my very favorite days!