Capturing Life's Moments: 8 Months

My baby turned 8 months old yesterday! It is hard to believe that we are so quickly nearing the one year mark. Ethan is developing quite the little personality now (we are definitely going to have our hands full with him), and we are close to the crawling stage. He can turn himself in circles but hasn't figured out how to go forward yet, which frustrates him immensely. He is becoming such a little boy now instead of a baby. He is somewhere between 20 and 21 pounds now, and we are already having to move him into 12 month clothes. He doesn't have any eating problems anymore. :)

In all honesty, I have to admit that I am enjoying this phase a lot more than the newborn one. There was a lot of stress involved at first with trying to get Ethan to eat properly, and on top of all of that, I don't function well on little sleep. It is a good thing that since about the time he was 6 weeks old, he has essentially sleeping through the night. He still doesn't like to nap well during the day, but he certainly has the nighttime routine down. I love watching him discover how to do new things and explore his surroundings. It is amazing how many things he can get himself into without being able to crawl. He thinks EVERYTHING belongs to him and that he should have it in his hands, but he hasn't quite figured out that he can only hold a couple of things at a time. Generally, I can get him laughing pretty hard, which is a lot of fun. Sometimes it doesn't take very much to get him going.

His first two teeth broke through a couple of weeks ago (the two bottom ones), and he is eating quite a few different foods now. One of his favorites is avocado. Actually, avocado was the first thing that we managed to find that he would eat well.

We have several home projects going on this year, but the one currently with the highest priority is getting a nice area of grass put into the front of the house for him to play in. Our house currently does not have any grassy play areas, front or back. This project has involved cutting down and digging up some small trees as well as some shrubs. We are still working on getting a couple of the stumps out of the ground, but we have made a lot of progress. The next step will be to bring in some good soil to add in and then the sod. I am excited to get it completed (hopefully by the end of the month or early next month) because Ethan loves being outside. We have been borrowing our neighbors' yard for short periods of play, but it will be very nice to have our own space.

Below are some of the most recent photos we have taken. He is starting to get into the whole picture taking thing, and will almost smile on command.