Conway can now sit up on his own and I feel 99% confident that if I leave him sitting on the hardwood floor he won't fall backwards. He CAN sit, but he doesn't do it for long because he quickly goes down to his belly or all fours and gets to movin'. Oh boy, this kid is trouble! Take a look at these pictures and you'll get a glimpse at what I'm talking about. He doesn't sit still! Put anything within arms reach and he grabs it. Lay him on his back on the changing table and he fights to roll over. Leave him in his highchair before or after eating and he rocks himself back and forth so much that the chair actually scoots across the floor. Put him on the floor and he starts going after a toy or Parker or Olive. (Olive's life just got a little bit worse, by the way.) For a while now Conway has been able to get around the house by basically doing the worm and this is still his primary mode of transportation. Today, though, he truly crawled for the first time. He's been flirting with it for months, but I just saw him do a legit crawl across the room. Here we go.
The list of foods Conway has eaten is getting longer. This month's additions were yams, pears, mango, banana, spinach, broccoli, yogurt, pumpkin, beets, chicken, and potatoes. As you can imagine he likes some better than others, but he eats all of it under the right conditions and the desired combinations. He's also eating a lot more. Last month he wasn't eating more than about a half an ounce at time. Now he's eating about 2 ounces at each meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) after nursing.
I hate to even say it out loud for fear of jinxing things, but he/we have finally hit a rhythm when it comes to sleep. To be fair, Conway has been a pretty good sleeper from the beginning, but he was changing so quickly that I couldn't seem to get a handle on his sleep needs. This month we finally dropped the dream feed. I was thinking about phasing it out, but instead one night when David was out of town I just decided to see what would happen if I didn't wake him up and feed him at 10:30pm before I went to bed. Well, what happened was that he slept until 7:15am. Praise the Lord! He has also stopped having a party for one in his crib during the night and I wonder if that was happening because I was messing with his sleep rhythm by waking him up for the dream feed. I don't know the answer to that and I'm just going to be happy with where we are. Yet another sleep positive is that he seems to be able to sleep through more noise during the day. He went through a patch of being a pretty light sleeper and at least for now he's back to sleeping through Parker's noisiness during Conway's naps. He has also completely given up his third nap, which was a bumpy transition, but has been kind of nice for our afternoons because we've been able to go for walks or head to the playground without Conway's nap getting screwed up. Well, we'll be able to do those things in the afternoon for one more day until daylight savings ends and it's already dark when the boys get up from their naps. Oh well. The hardest part about him dropping the third nap has been how tired (and grumpy) he gets by the end of the day. We tried moving his bedtime up, but I've figured out that at least for now he's roughly an 11-hours-of-sleep-a-night kid. So putting him to bed any earlier meant waking earlier in the morning and that I do not want. Feeding at 6:30pm and then giving him dinner seems to have made him a bit happier in the evening, though. He still nurses again right before he goes to bed which seems kind of silly since he just ate, but we're in a groove and I'm not messing with it. Conway is also waking up happy in the morning and from naps and can happily hang out in his crib for at least 15-20 minutes before we go get him if we need to. This is especially nice in the mornings if I'm still getting ready.
So, his current schedule is...
7:00/7:20 wake, nurse, breakfast
9:45 - 11:30 nap then nurse & lunch
2:00 - 3:45 nap then nurse
6:30 nurse, dinner
7:15 bath, jammies, nurse
7:45 lights out followed by a little chatting and then silence soon thereafter
Conway is way more into Parker's toys than his own. And even better than Parker's toys are all the interesting non-toys around the house like doors and cords and shoes. I guess it's good to see that he's inquisitive, but Oh My Word! Thankfully the house is still pretty baby/child-proofed from when Parker was this age. We do have to start closing the doors to bathrooms and stairs again, which will be interesting with Parker using them.
He's a good kid and Parker still really enjoys him. Parker loves giving Conway toys to play with and making him laugh. And Conway loves watching Parker. It's just so fun to watch these two together. I really hope this love and interest in each other continues.
Parker at 8 Months
