8 months!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thoughts are with you all this holiday season!  :)
I can't believe I have an 8 month old baby!  In my head this is the transition from little baby to big baby, and here we are!

Eating:
We're still on mostly purees, with some pincher practise (organic peas).  I've given her sheep and cow yogourt, she seems fine with it.  She still hasn't refused anything yet, but she's now keeping her mouth shut to indicate she's done.  We're lucky she's so far such an easy girl!  I'm not sure she knows that she can refuse food.  :)  I suspect this time might be over soon.

She eats twice a day, I'm thinking of adding a 'snack' in the morning as well.  Also, I've given her some coconut cream this week - fat good for the baby!

We go away on a cruise next month, I think I will bring store bought food to cover the week.  Customs won't allow homemade food through, so I think this will be our best bet.  If there is some food I can give her that we're eating I will, but I will have baby food as backup.  I'm thinking the packets will travel well.  Any mommy tips about travelling with food?

Breastfeeding still the rest of the time.  Really, it hasn't slowed down at all.  Tried giving her formula once, but she was having none of it.

Infant Potting:
We've moved to changing her diaper on the bathroom floor since she's such a squirmykins (in the middle of a diaper change she can pull a fast roll and suddenly be on her tummy - yikes!).  Way safer.  And I can use the 'leg over' technique if I have to! 

This bring pottying to the next level - she goes right on the toilet.  Cleanup is a DREAM.   She poos about half the time in the toilet now.  EXCELLENT.  Every poo in the toilet is waaaaaay less work for me.  Scraping the poo from the diaper into the toilet is fine, but often poo seems to get everywhere still.  Blech.  Even with gloves, still...it's a bit of a mess at times.  So I much prefer the poo directly into the potty!  :)

Cloth diapering:
Yes, we still are.  It's going great!  With the change of soap (to Tide free and clear) all my diapers are working fine now.  I've had to start stuffing them with more liners since Pips is peeing more since she's bigger.

My 'China cheapies' came and they're fine.  A bit on the big side.  I'm going to buy my friend who is expecting a whack load of them (like I think I'll be able to get ~21 for ~$100).  Exciting and fun!  Feel a bit guilty....but 21 pocket diapers is pretty much all you need!  Another friend and I will split it - we were kind of a threesome in university, it's great we're still close.

How I deal with grown up poop?  I have a scraper that I keep in a bucket next to the toilet with gloves.  I scrape the poopey diaper in, and rinse the scraper in the toilet, then put the diaper in the pail.  It's ok to have a bit of poop on the diaper, just not loads of it.  It all comes off in the wash.  :)

Milestones:
Super duper awesome crawler now.  Twice now she's actually crawled over other babies lying on the ground.  Pulls herself to standing pretty easily now.  She's really a physical kid, she's tough!  She's still not super keen on sitting.  She can, but she's not all that into it.  Likes playing at climbing a mound of pillows, although she doesn't actually climb yet.

Lots of babbling!  Says "da da" type of words often, but I don't think she's quite connecting it to DH yet, but we're trying to reinforce that.  Waves "bye-bye" with one arm - that's my favourite!  :)

Still hasn't been sick yet, knock on wood!

Favourite songs:
Alas, no automatic song smiles anymore.  Seems to like "Hello Pippa, and how are you?" the best right now.  Also likes "Let the fall leaves fall".

Sleeping:
No real change.  She still is generally up 2-3 times in the night for breastfeeding.  It can be a bit rough.  Sometimes its 4 times.

She's sleeping her own room now, so DH gets up and brings her to me.  I'm a super lucky lady!  I sometimes bring her back, sometimes DH does.  She does generally go right back to sleep, so that part is good - it's the being woken up out of a dead sleep that can be hard if it happens a few times in a night.  I do wish she'd go a bit longer between feeds, am trying to feed her more in the day, but not seeing much of a change.  Again, if it really bothered me we'd do some fancy protocol to reduce night feeds, but I'm not there yet.

Last night she did sleep from 11:30pm right to 5:30am - awesome, right?!!!