Eight Months Old

Time is flying by and you are now eight months old. You are growing up all the time, eating lots more solids you have now tried a variety of foods; baby rice, avocado, kumara, carrot, peas. broccoli, cauliflower, cheese, egg, pumpkin, rusks, apple, pear, nectarine, peach, beans, watermelon, rock melon and more. You are still not a big eater, you never have been a hungry baby but you are experimenting with different foods, tastes and textures as well as learning to open your mouth wide for the incoming spoon.
You have dropped one of your day time sleeps and are now down to two sleeps a day plus your long night sleep of 11 hours. This has meant that getting out and about during the middle of the day is easier to fit around your sleeps.
We have been back and fourth to the beach over summer and you are loving playing in the sand. The water is a bit daunting with the sound of the waves crashing and the temperature is cooler than you are used to (not like the warm pools we go swimming in) but you love investigating finding tiny bits and pieces in the sand. As well as feel the sand run between your fingers or the crunchy texture in your mouth. You took a liking to eating the sand and when I tried to brush your hand away from your mouth you improvised. With sand on your feet you opted for your big toe instead.
You are enjoying being on your feet and are either on your knees or about to push yourself off from your knees most of the time. That is when you aren't crawling off in a mad dash to chase down Ava or something else which has caught your eye. You have also just learnt to sit. This has almost happened by accident. We have never really encouraged you into doing any movement before your little body is ready to do it itself. So I have never really sat you propped up against something which has meant that other babies were sitting well before you. However on the odd occasion I would sit you up to see if you could do hold yourself up you were never really interested. Instead you would rather be on the move crawling from here to there you have never really been one to just sit still and let life pass you by, much preferring to jump on in and experience life. But just past the eight month mark you had just pulled yourself up into standing and having stood for a while you started to get a bit wobbly and you fell backwards onto your bottom straight into sitting just like that. Since then you have been getting down by either falling backwards like this into sitting or gently lowering one hand down next to your foot and lowering yourself.
We have recently got arty with Aunty Courtney and Uncle Blake heading off to India we sent them a card. I traced around your handprint and then cut it out putting a henna design on it to wish them a happy holiday and adventure from us all.