Kiersten’s Blog

I can’t believe my baby is 8 months old today!  He had a checkup with the doctor, who confirmed that he is, in fact, a huge baby.  He weighs 21 1/2 pounds and is 29 1/8 inches tall, putting him in the 80th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height.  How we got such an enormous child, I’ll never know.  I love this age.  He has become so much fun!  He hardly ever complains (except a little lately because his third tooth just broke through).  He loves to smile and will give the cutest grin to anybody who will pay any attention to him.  He rarely laughs and it’s pretty much only his big sister who can get him excited enough to go into hysterics.  He thinks she’s the greatest thing on the planet.  She thinks he’s pretty cool too.  I hope it stays that way.

He’s just learning to crawl.  He thinks his time in bed is supposed to be spent practicing crawling.  He’s a pretty good little scooter, although he goes backwards much of the time.  Mostly he wants to just move his legs and not work his arms.  Lately he has decided that the changing table is a really cool place to explore.  As soon as he’s set down, he tries to roll onto his tummy and heads straight to the wipes box, where he proceeds to push the button for a wipe to pop up.  Luckily he hasn’t learned yet how to get the wipes out of the box.  I’m sure that time will come soon enough.

His favorite toy is his exersaucer.  That thing is a life saver for me.  I can put him in it and he is as happy as can be, playing and jumping for at least a half hour.  His other favorite thing to do is eat, hence the hugeness.  He has made vast improvements in eating solids from when I first started feeding him real food.  Now he doesn’t make a mess at all.  He puts his hands out to the sides, twirling and gripping them as he eats.  In fact, he’s so non-messy that I often feed him without a bib at all!  This is a huge turnaround from when I had to strip him down to his diaper and bathe him after every meal.

He has finally started to sleep through the night, giving me some much needed sleep.  He still gets up around 11 for a bottle but then won’t eat again until 7 or so.  I can handle that.  Sometimes he still wakes up, but only long enough for me to put his pacifier back in his mouth.

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention.  He got one shot today: a booster for his seasonal flu vaccine.  He didn’t cry.  At all.  Not one tear, or even a wimper.  What a tough little guy!

Ashton is such a fun little guy and I’m so happy that I can be his mother and watch these changes as he grows.