8 months.

And, we have an 8 month old!  What a little mover, wow.  This has been a month of many, many changes!  Let's see, where should I start?

This is our son at 8 months old!  Isn't he handsome?  So cute...especially those little toes in the bottom corner of the picture!

It wasn't easy to get this picture, though.  Observe:

And there were many MANY more like this.  He actually fell right off the chair at one point but I was close enough that I swung my arm out and caught him like a superhero catches the princess before she hits the ground.  Saved the day with that one.  Whew.

Levi has been loving the standing this month.  I don't actually condone standing in the bathtub, but when he reaches his little arms over to my hands or the edge of the tub and starts to stand, I figure the safest thing to do is to hold onto him and at least keep him safe!

He's gotten pretty good at standing by himself...

But we always stay close by in case monkey doesn't catch his fall.  As he pulls himself up more and more on his own, though, it'll be harder and harder to always break the fall.  He's gotten so many more bumps and bruises since he's started to be more active.  He doesn't enjoy them too much, but hey, who enjoys falling when they least expect it and hitting their head on the sharp edge of a bookshelf? 

Levi has also been scooting around for a few weeks now.  He can get anywhere he wants to go, making several trips a day from the kitchen to the living room and back again.  We're slowly baby-proofing and learning that we need to keep certain doors closed if he's on the loose. : )

Levi has started eating solids this month!  Well, we started him on solids before he was 6 months old, but he just never caught on to them until this month.  He now eats 3 meals a day with us, plus a night-snack.  Of course, most of his nourishment still comes from me, but it's a start!  It's exciting to see him open his mouth for bite after bite of ANYTHING after 8 weeks of refusing everything.  He even inhaled his grandma B's garden peas (pureed) after refusing them weeks ago!  Now there's a boy with some good taste buds!  YUM! 

Levi still has only the two bottom teeth, but has been working on the two top teeth for about two months already.  Some days I can see the little white tip right there in his gums, but then it seems to recede a bit again.  We've had a few days of teething that haven't been fun, but overall we've got ourselves a happy camper!

Last month I mentioned that operation "sleep through the night" was going into effect this month.  Well, Levi slept through the night after only 3 nights of letting him cry-it-out and not going in.  It was easier than I thought once we just stopped going in (as opposed to going in to console him every few minutes which just made him more and more mad!).  BUT, I messed with a good thing and thought that a "dream feed" might earn me some later mornings.  Instead, it's seemed to have taught the little man that he needs a feed at midnight and he's started crying for 1-2 hours between 11pm and 2am.  Ugh.  And then he's still up at 6:00-6:30am to eat.  But, I am thankful for those couple weeks of glorious 8 hour nights.  I'm hoping that I'll get to sleep stretches like that again very soon : )  It seems, though, that we just don't have a naturally good sleeper which, at 2am, is quite frustrating to say the least!  (He's an excellent sleeper when I feed him multiple times during the night but not when he doesn't get what he wants...hmm)

Certain noises and places still scare Levi.  He seems to be a bit of a softie when it comes to certain things.  Here, I was reading a book to him and we got to a page that had lion sounds and he pouted every time.  So cute.  He'll go to strangers pretty well, but it seems only in short doses.  On Sunday when we were candidating, he would go to others, but after a few minutes, he would see me and start to pout/cry and want to come back.  I guess he comes by it naturally, though.  I was the same way as a kid!

Levi has also been gabbing alot this month.  He's starting to imitate words that we say.  He was saying "dada" alot so I would say "dada-daddy" to him and he would just watch me really closely...you could tell he was listening.  After a couple hours (not straight, don't worry), his "dada"'s were becoming "da-ee"'s.  I was so excited!  He's also been saying "dad" alot.  I'm working on "mama" and "mommy" but so far no dice.  Ah well.  It's exciting to see him learn and develop, whether or not he starts with "mama".  It's not like he knows what it means anyway...though I'm starting to wonder if he's figuring it out!

Size-wise, Levi is stretching out but not getting alot heavier.  I'm guessing the solids might help the weight-gain, yet the amount of moving he does every waking second probably counter-acts the calories pretty quickly.  Levi is still wearing his 9 month clothes (been wearing them for 2 months now) but has some 12-18month shirts that fit pretty well.  His bald spot is completely filled in (I think it has been for a month or two by now) and his hair is quite blonde compared to what it was when he was born.  He's a tanner, not a burner.  I hardly ever put sunscreen on him (oops!) and he's only ever tanned.  His hands are almost as dark as mine are!  We go for lots of walks but I usually have him in long sleeves so his tan stops at his wrists!

Levi continues to be a sweet boy who we are so so thankful to call our son!  What a blessing he is!  Nathan keeps saying that maybe we shouldn't have any more kids, cause there's no guarantee they'll be as easy or good as Levi is.  : p  I keep saying it's worth the risk.  ; )