I don’t know why it still amazes me that Levi continues to age and grow… I guess it’s just because it happens so much quicker than I thought possible.  He is already 8 months old!  Wow.  Here’s what he’s up to these days:

He now has 8 teeth, 4 on bottom and 4 on top.  He loves to grind them together and make this horrific sound, although he doesn’t do it as much as he did at first.  I guess the novelty is wearing off.

He is sleeping really well.  He sleeps about 11 hours at night (7 to 6), and usually takes 3 naps during the day – a morning nap that is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, his main nap in the early afternoon that lasts usually an hour and a half (up to 2.5 hours), and an optional late afternoon nap for another 30 minutes to hour.  Almost immediately upon being put in his crib, he will roll himself onto his tummy and gently coo for about 15 minutes until he falls asleep, occasionally crying out once or twice.  The only challenge now is that he can scoot himself backwards and jam his legs through the crib slats, which awakens him on the wrong side of the crib, so to speak.

I really feared, um I mean thought, that he’d be crawling by now, but he’s not (yay!).  He still scoots backwards and in circles.  He rocks himself forward on his tummy like he’s doing “the worm” breakdance.  He gets up onto his knees like a dog and rocks back and forth, and has even brought his left knee forward to get him closer to his toys, but he has not officially crawled yet.   I would say it’s around the corner, but since I’ve thought that for awhile, maybe not! Who knows.

He can pull himself to standing when you take him by the hands.  In fact, he LOVES to do this.  When you try to sit him down on his bottom, he fights long and hard to stay standing.  He also loves to “bouncy bouncy,” when you hold him under his arms and he immediately starts jumping up in elation.  He thinks this is really funny.

He’s able to feed himself a few puffs of Gerber cereal, though this has really been a challenge.  He’s had a great little pincher grasp (thumb and forefinger together) with both hands for several weeks now – he even impressed the developmental ped with his dexterous finger skills.  So this coupled with his hefty appetite and plethora of teeth made me think he was ready for solids. Yet for weeks, when we’d try to give him any solid food (e.g. mashed banana, broken apart Cheerios) he would get it in the middle of his tongue and begin to dry heave quite dramatically.  Alas, now he can get a few bites down without incident.  We’ll have to work on table manners (not smacking) on down the road.

He has also learned to feed himself his own bottle.  For the first few days, when he figured out that we were trying to get him to hold it himself, he would put up a fuss and start crying at the beginning of meal time.  He would even dig his little elbows back into his carseat, making it almost impossible for you to force his hands around the bottle.  But he has now embraced the concept and gladly tries to hold it himself.  Sometimes after he’s been drinking for a few minutes and the formula runs kinda low, you have to help him tump his bottle upward.  But overall he’s great at it – now when he’s hungry and his bottle comes within his reach, he immediately grabs it and stuffs it in his mouth like it may be his last opportunity to eat for a week.

He is such a sweet and happy baby.  When he’s sitting in his high chair and I’m across the kitchen, every time I look over, I see the silhouette of his fuzzy little head and these two bright blue eyes as he cranes his neck to watch me. Once we make eye contact, he smiles really big and starts making his “excited sound” (where he breathes in and out really fast through his nose like he’s huffing).  When he is sitting on the floor playing with his toys and I walk by and say hi, he gets really excited and happy then too.  ALL the ladies at church (random strangers, people we know)… they all are fascinated with watching him because he is such a bright-eyed little charmer.  He melts their hearts.  Yesterday, a row of ladies told us that Sunday after Sunday, they can’t take their eyes off of him because he is so attentive and cute.  They even told us where we sat each week.  And when he smiled at one of them, well, it was over.  She bragged to the other ladies for the next 15 minutes.

He has started going to the church nursery, but actually this is not going so well.  There are too many new things and people to see, and too many sounds and lights, for him to sleep (which is usually what he needs during church time). So, he stays awake long past his naptime, until he reaches his breaking point and starts screaming inconsolably.  But each morning we leave him, he makes it a little longer.  In fact yesterday, he was ready for a nap at 8 so we dropped him off before we even made it to communion.  Once in the nursery, he made it all the way through the rest of service, fellowship time after service, and 80% of class (all without a nap of course) before I got “buzzed” to come console him.  That’s a new record!

He seems to have a gentle spirit (except with the cat, whose hair he yanks hard as soon as he can get a pinch of it).  But… he gingerly twirls my and the nanny’s hair through his fingers when we pick him up.  He also loves to reach out and gently touch our faces with his chubby little fingers while we hold him.  He will contentedly play with his toys on the floor for quite a long
time.  Even if he’s getting bored, hungry, needs a change, etc., he will generally just make these quiet little sigh or hmmmm sounds for a good 15 minutes before getting louder.  He can sit all the way through, attentively touching the pictures and turning the pages, while we read “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket” to him at night.

To illustrate his patient, uncomplaining spirit, here’s a little anecdote for you: one morning about a week ago when I went to get him up for the day, he was swimming in his own poop in the crib (our first MAJOR blowout – soiling all the way through his diaper, onesie, sheet protector, sheet, and crib pad), without making a peep.  He was face-down in it when I arrived, and he just looked up at me and smiled.  Not only did he have it in almost every orifice of his body, but he had spread it over a majority of the surface of his crib.  No telling how long he had been awake and rolling in it.  I stripped him, put him in a clean
diaper, and set him in the jumper so I could wash his sheets and draw a bath. Well, when I went to pick him up for his bath, I realized he had again pooped all over himself and the jumper.  I don’t know how his little body could’ve physically contained so much poop!!!  He must’ve excreted half his body weight. He had again completely saturated the inside and outside of his diaper, as well as the jumper seat, and was happily jumping up and down in it, getting it all over the place.  I learned my lesson – no more prunes for Levi!

Basically his developmental pediatrician visits consist of them taking a few measurements, and otherwise asking me questions and watching him play to see what his skills are.  They set out various toys and see what he can and can’t
do.  Well, they set out one toy, a little phone with a long pull-string… I don’t even know what this test was for.  Anyway, he grasped for the string instead of the bright dialpad or other larger aspects of the phone (apparently this means he passed the test).  So, the nurse put out the next toy for the next test.  Well, Levi was not ready to move on from the phone.  He really
liked that thing, and was not done playing with it.  So he ignored the new toy and kept reaching for the phone.  The nurse then moved the phone behind her back and started trying to distract Levi with the new toy.  However he just leaned over on his side and craned his neck so he could see where she had stuck that phone!  It was so cute!  She immediately said, “Wow, what great object permanence!”  He kept looking for that phone for quite a while.  So when I got home, I ordered him that same little phone from eBay.  In his own little baby way, he earned it.  :)

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