Ivy at 8 months

We just got home from being gone all week and I am way behind on everything, but I needed to sit down and post about Ivy at 8 months because I'm behind on blogging too and soon enough she'll be 9 months!

(Photo credits: Caroline Grace Photography)

Ivy just gets more fun all the time, as babies tend to do. She smiles so much, she has the cutest bottom teeth and she just smiles huge and squints her eyes and kind of arches her back when she smiles at you. She also has a rarely seen side that includes arching her back, and it's not quite as pleasant as the smiling thing, but I guess we are all entitled to be opinionated every once in a while and Ivy continues to be a very easy-going baby for the most part.

She sleeps pretty well unless there is a tiny noise and then she is awake. Fortunately she is flexible as far as her sleep times go, and if she wakes up early or is very tired she is usually still pretty happy. Ivy still likes to be held a lot and interacted with, but this month she has discovered how to move around in her walker. She can roll anywhere she wants from side to side and I imagine by the 9 month post I will be reporting that she is army crawling. She is putting everything in her mouth these days and is so grabby and curious about everything she sees. She is especially enamored with remotes, cell phones, or anything with buttons or that could possibly be breakable or valuable.

Her eating habits are pretty good. She wakes up around 7 (if earlier than 7, I nurse her and put her back to bed). She nurses in the morning and then has a fruit, nurses again around 11, 3, and before she goes to bed. She likes fruit a lot--prunes, bananas (both baby food and cut up so she can feed herself), apples, pears, and yogurt. She still likes the orange veggies pretty well but does not do well with green veggie baby food. She will eat green beans but only if they are cut up into pieces and she can feed herself, so I am going to try that with other green veggies as well. She LOVES puffs and that is my distraction technique when she is fussy and I am trying to get stuff done-I just put her in her high chair and give her puffs while I finish whatever I'm doing. She also likes mum mums, yogurt bites, and cheerios.

She takes two good naps a day and then usually a third little cat nap in the afternoon. I think we'll probably do three naps for a while unless she starts waking up later than 7 by some miracle. But like I said, her naps are pretty flexible. A few days a week I go to the gym during her nap time, and she rarely falls asleep there, she'll just fall asleep on the way home or when we get home. And today she and Ezra and I ran some errands and did a grocery trip and she just rode around in my beco carrier and looked around instead of falling asleep.

One thing I want to remember about Ivy is this cute little thing she does when I hold her where she buries her face in my neck if someone else comes up to talk to her. She acts all shy and smiles and nuzzles me. I love it and it is the sweetest thing ever.

We are on the downhill stretch to a year old! I can't believe it, but I am so grateful that she is growing and learning and changing every day. Ivy, you are so fun!