Ally is now 8-months old, that means only 4 months till her 1st birthday. Yup, I’m already planning ahead! Hey, if I plan ahead I can get more things done without stressing along with budgeting for all the supplies needed for the celebration. Okay enough about the future; I’m here to chat about the past month…
The hardest part of this past month was the transition back to work. Of course the holidays are one of the most joyous times but they are also the busiest. I didn’t expect these kids to have such a hard time. At first it was Bode only where he was acting up going on constant time outs, hitting his friends, and refusing to nap and bothering his friends who were sleeping. But when he made a comment about being a baby I quickly realized that he was jealous of Ally going to Olga’s. He was no longer the baby and when I was at home it was different because Ally was just with me but now she is at Bode’s old stomping grounds and he started to revert and act like a baby. Through some bribery he slowly got better but it’s going to take some more time to get back to normal. Ally was okay the first week, lots of crying or whining at daycare but by the second week she wasn’t sleeping through the night making it difficult for both Matt and I to function at our jobs. This is the first time where Matt has had to help out since I too need my sleep at night because of work and unfortunately we were both feeling the effects. Therefore our 930p bedtime was definitely something to look forward to at the end of the day. By the end of this month Ally was now enjoying her time at daycare, smiling and not crying the minute I walk in the door to be held. While Bode is still not taking naps, he is however behaving better and has made huge improvements overall.
Sleeping/Feeding
We are now at 8-months and I’m still breastfeeding (even though I’m pumping now for 2 feedings). She eats 2 meals a day, usually at lunchtime and dinnertime, and takes 2 naps a day which equal to about 3 hours total. My feedings look like this – 6am milk, 9am milk, 11am lunch, 3pm milk, 5pm milk, 6pm dinner, and a dream-feed at 930pm. So far she is still mostly eating grains, fruits, and vegetables. I tried introducing yogurt the other day and she loved it so I think we’ll include it more often for some variety. She typically goes to bed before 7pm and gets up around 6am but since going back to work her sleep schedule has been a little messed up. Hopefully she’ll get back to her regular routine soon.
Miscellaneous
We finally have a backwards crawler and she is really good at sitting up on her own. Today, on her actual 8th month ‘birthday’, she did one small crawl forward; therefore we are now predicting her fully crawling in the next few weeks. Since we already have the house baby proofed, we’ll have to just watch out for Bode’s toys since so many of them have little pieces that I can see Ally putting in her mouth.
Ally had her first New Year’s (minus the celebration). Grandpa and Grandma Hank came over to watch the kids so we could enjoy a night out with our friends (Brent and Katie Nash). Matt and I haven’t been on that many dates lately so it was really nice to get away for a few hours. But it was really hard to recover after staying up till midnight (and having a 5am wakeup call the next day).
Allyson got her third tooth on December 18th and about a week later the 4th tooth popped up too! It’s funny because they aren’t her top middle teeth; they are the two upper ‘canine’ teeth that came through.
Diaper size – size 2, but I put her in 3’s at nighttime so the transition to 3’s all day is coming soon!
Clothing size –6-9 month clothes
Nicknames – Al, Ally, Ally-Boo, Ally-Bear
8-Month Hair color – brown, more and more hair is coming every day!
8-Month eye color –blue
8-Month Weight – TBD
8-Month Height – TBD
What’s up with Bode?
We had a lot of fun this holiday season with Bode. Santa (along with the grandparents) brought Bode lots of fun toys to play with; he must have been on the ‘nice list’ this year. It was also nice to see both of his aunts and uncle for the holidays since we don’t see them very often right now.
Nicole Hank 