8 months

Willa’s 8 months old! She's just as sweet and curious and determined as ever. Her personality is really starting to show. She smiles all day long and is super giggly.

She spends a lot of time crawling around and standing up. She loves buckets and baskets filled with toys and stuff. She'll spend a good 20 minutes dumping out a basket and examining its contents. She prefers "grown up" stuff over baby toys. She would much rather play with a wooden spoon or hairbrush than a fancy baby toy. She loves remote controls, cords, and cell phones. She loves music and loves to dance. Her favorite song is the Wheels on the Bus. Her favorite baby toy is her xylophone.

She loves when we read to her. Her favorite book is Dear Zoo. She's pretty good at lifting the little flaps in the book. She loves water. She loves swimming and loves bath time. She loves to swing...inside, outside, or at the park. I think she'd swing at the park all day long. She sleeps great. Typically, she goes to bed around 7:30 and gets up around 6:30.

Willa adores her daddy and gets very excited when he comes home. It amazes me how her little internal clock is so strong. She knows when Matt should be getting home and starts to get a little fussy if he's late. She also seems to know when it's bedtime or nap time or time to take a bath or eat or whatever.

Her favorite person is her mama though. She refuses to take a bottle. So nursing is still her main source of nutrition. She continues to eat stage 1 baby food. She loves to suck on crackers and pieces of bread. She'll drink a little water out of a sippy cup or an adult cup, but spits out juice and formula. She is very interested in what we are eating and wants to taste everything we're eating.

We love watching Willa go through all of the stages and reach milestones. I have a 0-12 months milestone chart. I am amazed at how much she masters every month and how the chart can predict her next step. For example, the chart said she should be saying da-da and ma-ma to her parents by about 8 months (not necessarily to the correct parent). At 7 and 1/2 months I hadn't even heard her say the /d/ phoneme. I heard the /m/ and /a/ but not directed towards us. We thought for sure, she was going to reach this milestone later than the chart suggested. But two days before she was officially 8 months, she started saying /d/ and within a few days was directing da-da and ma-ma at us. Her little voice melts our hearts. Kids are so smart. They learn so quickly. We love our sweet 8 month-er!