Henry

Well, I have not done very well posting a picture every time Henry turns one month older. But here are Henry's pictures from his 8 month birthday (as well as other pictures) and an update on this sweet boy of ours!

Month 8 and doing great!

This boy loves his paci and uses the Soothie kind. It's so cute to see him twirl his paci around in his mouth with his hand! The Soothie is what he was given at the hospital and has used ever since; a couple times we've tried to give him a paci similar to Charlie's, and he won't take them (also, Charlie usually ends up hijacking them anyways...). Henry has played a game with Charlie a couple times where he takes Charlie's paci out, Charlie grabs it back and puts it back in, they both laugh, and Henry starts all over again! Cute!

He is doing a great job sitting up unassisted. For a while he has been able to catch himself if he starts to fall over, and now he can almost get himself back into a sitting position again from being on his back or side. 

He chews on evvvvvverything. For a while he liked his frog rattle/teether and the jingle bell tambourine, but now he seems to really like chewing on cars, the workbench tools, and the pans from the play kitchen. He likes to open and close the cabinet on the play kitchen, loves to find cords and wave them about (until we see him and tell him no!), and has been known to chase Charlie when he's pushing the stroller to try to play with the wheels!

Henry is now on the move! He is getting really good (and fast!) at scooting around "army crawl" style. The minute the front door opens he will make a beeline for it, and usually if one of us goes upstairs he will crawl to the stairs and wait for us to come back down! At this point we are having to do a lot of teaching with Charlie about sharing his toys, since Henry can pretty much crawl and get whatever he'd like on the floor!

Henry recently graduated to the duck tub! He really likes splashing and playing with the bath toys.

He is definitely a tummy sleeper, with his bum in the air!

We put him to bed between 7 and 8, depending on the night, but usually closer to 7. He does a great job of getting himself to sleep and sleeps hard through the night, usually waking up between 5:30 and 6:30. If it's too early, Jimmy just puts him in bed with us, and we all sleep some more! As for naps, he usually takes two short naps in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. Twice when he's been asleep in his carseat, he's barely woken up, seen me looking at him and heard me say hi, then smiled at me and gone back to sleep! He's so sweet- I love it!!!

A couple months ago we put him in the Tigger Jumper for the first time.

He was a little tentative at first, but he's a great Tigger jumper now!

During the week Henry usually jumps at least once a day. When Henry wakes up from his morning nap, Charlie and I go upstairs to get him up. Henry gets in the Tigger jumper, Charlie rides his rocking horse, and I put on my make-up! Charlie will often say, "Henry bounce!" Henry grins really big and gets to jumpin' the second I put him in there!

Henry also enjoyed the Exersaucer for a couple months, with a similar zeal that Charlie had. They both loved to jump in that thing, and they both jumped hard! But since Henry is now scooting around, he doesn't want to be in there as much anymore.

Also, in the picture above it looks like Henry is clapping. He learned to do this a couple months ago, and it has been so precious to watch! I don't remember the date when I noticed it, but I was so excited! Pretty much anytime you say "Yay!" or he's really happy about something, he claps! We also get a kick out of the way he shakes his head. He has been doing this for months- it was never to say "no" as far as I can tell. The first place I noticed it was when I was changing his diaper. Sometimes he would just lay there and shake his head back and forth! He also does it in his carseat sometimes. Now since we've laughed at this and mimicked him, he does it to us as well!

No teeth have erupted yet as far as we can tell, but he sure does teethe on everything! I've been trying to help him learn how to drink from a sippee cup, but he really just likes to chew on them. I think he thinks if any of the drink happens to fall into his mouth, that's just a bonus!

Henry is doing great with baby food and is on Stage 2. He usually eats a bowl of oatmeal and a bowl of applesauce (or some other fruit) for breakfast, a meat and a veggie for lunch, and a meat and veggie (or two veggies, or a veggie and a fruit) for dinner. He drinks a big bottle after he wakes up in the morning, a small bottle between breakfast and lunch, another in the afternoon after lunch, and a bottle before bed as well. 

He is definitely not interested in eating finger foods yet. I've tried multiple times to give him the smallest fraction possible of a Puff and he doesn't want it! (So Charlie eats them instead...)

A couple other things:

When I read him books, he usually just tries to turn the pages back and forth or eat the book. 

His first sound was da da da, followed by ba ba ba and ma ma ma. Recently I thought I heard him trying to make the "n" sound, na na na, which is entirely possible since Charlie gets told "no" around here quite a bit. 

The "b" sound is now starting to sound like "Bye bye," and he'll mimick the sound when we make it. Usually if I ask him to say ma ma, he'll smile at me and repeat it. So I don't know if he realizes that's my name, or he's just being precious and smiling at me! Either way, I love it. I love him to pieces, and he's got me wrapped tight around his finger!! Love you, Henry Bug!