Little Buddy is 8-and-a-half months old, and life with him is very busy. He loves to be active and move around, but he’s also very inquisitive and enjoys playing with his toys and other things that he finds around the house. Sometimes things like boxes and cabinet handles provide more excitement than baby toys, though.
For the past few months, he’s been mobile but has only been doing the army crawl. Just this week he has started trying to crawling on his knees. It’s fun to watch him master new skills. He is becoming more and more stable on his feet when he pulls up on things. Unfortunately, he has also learned how to climb onto the hearth, so my project this week has been to find a screen to keep him out of the fireplace.
As far as food goes, Little Buddy still has no teeth, so we do mostly baby food, in addition to breast milk. For protein, I’ve started giving him tiny pieces of cheese or mixing moist scrambled eggs into baby purée. To help him learn how to chew, I give him gluten-free veggie baby puffs. He still loves avocado, and I’ve started feeding him small amounts of plain yogurt.
I haven’t yet allowed Little Buddy to feed himself finger food because I think that would be confusing to him, to give him small pieces of food on his highchair and tell them to eat them but to tell him not to put choking hazards in his mouth that he finds on the floor. So to avoid that confusion, for now I just feed him everything with a spoon or my clean hands. He has good fine motor skills, so he’s not missing out on any development.
We really can’t believe that the one-year mark is coming up in just over three months. Parenthood is challenging–I think it’s one of the greatest challenges a person can face in life. It requires so much mental and physical energy. But it’s also incredibly rewarding. Watching Little Buddy’s baby milestones has been incredible. I can’t even begin imagine what it will be like to watch him learn to read, write, and ride a bike.
