Abe at Eight Months

Abe turned eight months old on Tuesday. Tuesdays are the days we run around like mad all day, and, of course, it was cloudy...I almost bagged the whole thing and waited for Wednesday, but I decided to take a few minutes Tuesday evening and see what I could get. And then I took a few more Wednesday (when it was STILL cloudy) for good measure. So in some of these pictures, Abe is actually eight months and ONE DAY old.

This was a very busy month in baby development. When I posted his pictures last month, he was very, very close to crawling. He had it down within a week or so after hitting seven months, and now there's no stopping him. He also gets up on his hands and feet and crawls that way sometimes instead of on his knees. He's pulling up on everything all the time. He claps! Today I could have sworn he said "doggy" very clearly twice, but I can't get him to do it on command, so it's hard to know for sure. But he's doing lots of fun babbling. He's not so quick with the smiles anymore for people he doesn't know well, but he stares intently at them for the longest time and then occasionally decides to bestow a toothy grin. He started his Music Together classes a few weeks ago, and his teacher says he's the best one in his class. I'm just kidding. She didn't say that at all. But I can tell that's what she's thinking ;).

More pictures!

Best toothy grin I've ever gotten. Too bad there wasn't more light so I could have gotten it a little sharper. Five teeth now. He's working on number six, and it's keeping us all from sleeping nearly as much as we'd like. Stupid tooth! Why do they need so many anyway?!

My baby is a goofy baby.

I put this one in for the arched eyebrow. He does that a lot.

Crawling: mastered! He can even do it one handed when he needs to pick up something to put in his mouth. Which is always.

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The Ikea Crib Eight Months Later: A Bit of Babyproofing

Abe's crib is the Sundvik crib from Ikea. As I've mentioned before, this selection was motivated primarily by price. The crib is $119, and I like the way it looks just fine. It has clean simple lines that fit in well with the nursery. It's not flashy or exciting, but it does its job without drawing attention to itself.

I wasn't interested in spending more on a crib for a few reasons:

1. Cribs rarely excite me, no matter how much they cost. I just....don't care that much about cribs. They aren't like chairs. I love chairs.

2. I had no idea whether Abe would actually USE his crib much at all. Ari loved the crib. Milo hated sleeping, but didn't much care where he was doing it. Gus HATED the crib with a fiery passion and slept in bed with us until he was three. So, you know, I'm pretty open minded about baby sleeping arrangements. I just want everyone to sleep; I don't care where it happens.

3. Even if babies sleep in cribs, they don't do it for very long, relatively speaking. Abe's my last baby; he and some kid from Craigslist are the only ones who are going to use this thing. I'd rather save my money for something that will stick around longer.

So those are all my reasons for buying the crib to start with.

When we put the crib together, my only concern, looking forward, was that the directions made it look like we'd pretty much need to take the whole damn thing apart again to lower the mattress down once Abe started pulling up on things. But, of course, at the time, that seemed too impossibly far off to even worry about.

But then, somehow, he got bigger. Big enough to start trying to pull up on things. So, a few weeks ago, we had to undertake the daunting task of lowering the mattress. I thought I would report back on this process to make my Ikea crib analysis complete.

Turns out it was pretty easy.

We didn't have to take the whole crib apart; we just had to take one end off and then slide the bottom that the mattress rests on out and put it back in the lower position. Like this:

When we went to this, we learned that we had brilliantly thought to store the instruction manual AND the allen wrench under the mattress so that we'd be able to find them when the time came to lower the mattress:

Our minds were so sharp back before we had a fourth kid!

We opted not to put them back under there once we lowered the mattress, by the way, lest Abe somehow figure out a way to pry up the mattress while sitting on it and pull the choking hazard tools out from under there. Better safe than sorry. (note to future self: they're in the top drawer of Abe's changing table/dresser)

We turned it on its side like so.

Unscrewed all these little things.

And put the bottom back in at the lower position (there are only two positions). This part--fitting the little things into the little thing places--was the hardest part. But not bad. I would say the whole process took the two of us 20 minutes? With a baby crawling around distracting us.

The sad part is that we had to retire the crib skirt I made to match the curtains. I was going to just use heavy duty double sided tape and tape it farther back on the mattress board...but once the board was lowered the gap between it and the side of the crib was too tight to wiggle the fabric through. I might have been able to do it had I been willing to spend more time and get more frustrated. Instead, I'm thinking of making a couple of pillows or something.

I took this picture of it all folded up to commemorate it:

So my take on the crib after eight months of use and after the arduous mattress lowering? Yep, still good with it. And I can even still reach to put Abe down when he's asleep. I was worried I'd have to just drop him the last half a foot or so. And that might wake him up. But no! My arms are just long enough!

Just in time!

(okay, I stood him up there. But this was maybe a month ago. He's pulling up on everything now)

Abe at Seven Months (plus Gus' August pics)

Seven months! I think I've officially abandoned his white t-shirt AND using his nursery as the default photo shoot location. It was cloudy again, and it's much easier to get decent light in the sunroom.

His six month check-up happened after I did his six month post, so his stats from that, for posterity (because this is the closet thing the poor kid has to a baby book) are that he weighed 17 pounds, 14 ounces and was 26 inches long. This puts him in the 25th percentile for height and around 50th for weight, and makes him my only baby who's been under 20 pounds at 6 months (Milo hit 20 pounds before 4 months). My fat little peanut. He can still squeeze into 3-6 month clothes, but the next size up fits him better now.

Apparently they changed all the rules since last time I had a baby, and now 6 month old babies can already eat practically everything! So he's already tried stuff like yogurt and eggs. He won't eat much of anything if I try to feed him, but does pretty well for Dave.

Trying to crawl is definitely the biggest thing in Abe's life right now. He'll flip over onto his hands and knees any time he's sitting down, try to move forward, get frustrated when he can't (or can't very far or without enormous effort anyway), and then collapses onto his stomach in angry tears. Repeat endlessly. He's getting good at pulling up on things, too. Our days of peace and immobility are very limited.

We've got separation anxiety and fear of strangers setting in now, too. He wants me or some other
immediate family member all the time.

But he's also mostly a very happy baby, babbles adorably, and has a deep baby belly laugh that's utterly charming. He's starting Music Together classes next week, which should go well with his lifelong love of music.

Apparently I'm pretty into black and white lately. Which is sort of a return to my roots.

I finally got nice, toothy grins this month!

So good at standing on his big chunky legs!

I like this one because it shows how he's really playing these days. Putting things into the barn, taking them out. When he's not grumpy, he can play by himself for a decent amount of time.

And it was Gus' month for big kid photos. He got a haircut later that same day :)

Abe is Six Months Old!

In impossible to believe news, Abe is already six months old. Just a few months ago, he looked like this:

Now he sits up all the time, he has TWO TEETH (which I did not manage to get a picture of today), and he's busting out of that white t-shirt he's been wearing since his newborn pictures. In fact, we seem to have lost a button somewhere along the way. Next month we may have to leave the t-shirt behind. We also have lots of babbling going on, along with hearty baby chuckling at hilarious stuff like peek-a-boo. We celebrated his six month birthday with his first real attempt at eating solid food, and that event (which he seemed to have mixed feelings about, but he gave it a good try, at least) is well documented here.

He's still sleeping beautifully at night, still sleeping irregularly during the day. It's amazing how much more interactive he is now than a month ago. He suddenly finds the dogs and cats hilarious. He is suspicious of strangers. This is the first month he's been all, "whoa! check out this awesome stuffed seal!" during his photo session :).

Also, it was finally a sunny 17th! So I had a lot more focused pictures to choose from. And that plus the milestoneyness of turning six months means there are lots of pictures this month. Lots. Here you go!

....and it was Milo's turn for photos this month. Milo was not so excited about this. So we have a lot of very serious pictures and a couple of trying desperately not to smile pictures:

Abe at Five Months

Five months sounds SO big; so much older than four months. Sniff, sniff. And this past month seemed to fly by, probably partly because we were out of town for a week of it. Another rainy 17th to make photography challenging. I took a million or so pictures, but the vast majority were out of focus, owing both to the bad light and the wiggly baby.

Abe had his four month check-up a few weeks ago, and he was in the 70th percentile for weight and......20th for height. Fat little peanut! My other babies have all started out way up in the 90-100th percentile for height and then mostly just stayed there, so it's a new experience having a little guy who still fits in his 3-6 months stuff at 5 months.

He's starting to be able to sit up for short periods, particularly if you give him something to hold onto, which makes for a little variety in photography. He's sitting unsupported in that picture up there, with the big seal to hang onto for emotional support. When he's upset, he'll usually calm down immediately when he hears music. Balls are his favorite toys. He spends a lot of time staring intently at his brothers, ready to flash a giant grin at them as soon as they look at him. He still takes a lot of 20-30 minute naps, but sometimes he'll mix it up with a good 2 hour one, so I'm still hopeful he'll start to appreciate long naps more soon. No signs of creeping or crawling yet, which is probably just as well since there are no signs of the kind of babyproofing around here that that will necessitate either. Nothing new to report on the teething front: much drool, no teeth.

I had a grumpy (he's had a bit of a cold) baby to contend with on top of the bad light, so....well, here's what I managed to get:

Obligatory seal picture. Also, the white t-shirt is back! I found it! Still fits pretty well.

The saddest baby in the world.

It was Ari's month for solo pictures, but I wasn't thrilled with any of those, either. But I got some nice ones at Disney, so it all works out.