Reagan Eight Months

Wow! This month has been big for Miss Reagan!

- She's CRAWLING!!!!!! This is crazy to me! Neither of the other girls crawled until 10 months, and that was after we worked with them for weeks! Reagan figured it out all on her own. She started getting up on all fours and rocking and then figured out army crawling. In the past week, she's figured out how to coordinate those knees and elbows and is on the move!! She's not particularly fast but she's getting it :) I guess we'll be vacuuming and sweeping a lot more! The big girls think it's so fun that Reagan is crawling. They've been cheering her on all month and love to tell me how much she moves each time. However, they're starting to get a reality check as I'm constantly reminding them to pick stuff up!!
- She's mastered the pincer grasp and is a pro at eating. She never did warm up to the baby cereal so we just gave up on that, and she's not a huge fan of the pureed baby food. However, she'll eat out of the pouches that have a little more variety than just the typical "first foods." But she really likes finger foods - cheerios, bread, baby puffs, veggie straws, waffles, etc. Anything we make that I can break into bite-sized pieces she'll eat. She even ate chicken roll-ups with us a couple days ago, her first protein. She LOVES the veggie straws, I think because she can just hold them in her mouth and chomp on them. I'm also amazed at how fast she picked up the pincer grasp. It only took her a couple days to be able to get everything to her mouth consistently. She also loves to drink out of straws.
- She's off her reflux medication now, but she still seems to have trouble with milk products, whether it's me eating them or her eating stuff made with dairy. I haven't had ice cream since May, but I notice she struggles even if I drink too much milk. She also has trouble with things like waffles that are made with milk. I'm really hoping this will pass - milk is a huge part of our diet so I don't know what we'll do if she has a lactose intolerance.
- Perhaps on a related note, this girl has some serious gas issues. I go in her room every morning and swear she has blown out her diaper based on the smell, but there's never anything there. She just farts like CRAZY! She really only poops about once a week, although it really is usually a blow out. But boy can she toot. She definitely gets that from her Dad.
- She hates getting dressed. Screams the whole time. Silly girl.
- Teeth are going to be the death of both of us. She cut two more this week, giving her four total. She has such a hard time with teeth :( Those stinkers cost us three pretty sleepless nights. It got to the point where she wouldn't take the bink or even close her mouth. Poor baby!
- She's obsessed with tags. She finds them on everything, clothes, toys, whatever. She just loves to feel them.
- She got a hold of a dum dum at the ward Halloween party and LOVED it, of course! She ate the whole thing and vehemently resisted any effort to take it away!
- She loves to talk. She babbles away and especially loves to randomly shriek! I think she learned that from her sisters.
- Speaking of her sisters, she loves them so much! She initially was all about Madison but as she gets older and spends more time interacting with McKinley during the day, their relationship is getting stronger! They have a lot of fun together. Reagan likes to climb on McKinley, pat her and sometimes pull her hair. McKinley likes to give lots of hugs and kisses. Reagan gets very excited to see both girls. If I'm holding her and one of the girls walks by, she jumps and shrieks and squirms to get down to them!
- She's started doing this super cute thing where she wrinkles up her nose and snuffles at us! I love it! She also loves to smack her lips and click her tongue. She also still loves to blow raspberries!
- With three girls now, we've stopped doing baths for the time being and instead we just run all three of them through the shower with me. Reagan loves the shower! She gets so excited to get in and then is all over the place when I'm trying to wash her. She especially loves to grab all the bottles in the shower.
- She's not really on a consistent schedule, but she generally eats every 3-4 hours. She naps in the morning around 9 and then again in the afternoon, around 12:30 or 1 depending on how long she slept in the morning. Evenings are still tough. Since we leave to pick up Madison at 3, she never sleeps longer than that for her afternoon nap. By 6, she's one tired baby! We keep her up until 7 and then she eats and goes to bed. She's been doing the 5 am feeding consistently until the last two nights, when she's gone to 7 am!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow, what a difference that makes in my outlook on life! I'm hoping it's a new trend and not just her making up for the sleepless teething nights. We'll see
- I'm definitely still her favorite, but she's warming up to Dad :) She likes to wave to him in the mornings when he leaves for work and she always wants to go to him when he gets home.
- While she's been working on crawling, I've been trying to work with her on sitting. She sits okay but isn't completely stable, and if she's going to start crawling, I want her to be able to go from her knees to her bum and vice versa. Thankfully, she is getting a lot better. I actually found her sitting up in her bed one day this week after a nap and she's gone from crawling to sitting by herself a couple times.
- Her favorite toy is the music table. She loves to stand at it and bang on it. She likes to stand in general. We've started putting her toys on the ottoman and just letting her stand against it and play.