nalani at 8 months: toddler-in-the making
Posted by laralynnian on 17 Dec 2010 at 09:30 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Nalani has turned half-toddler in the last month. She can make her way slowly around a room, and manages to get into anything in her path. She loves pulling things off the bottom of our coffee table (where we now store only big-piece puzzles and soft books), the bottom of our family room bookshelf (also replaced with nothing but board books), and before we moved them out of the way, the cables on Daddy’s record player in the corner of the room. Yup, so far we’re doing reactive baby-proofing.
Our little girl has just started forward crawling, and just a few steps at a time. But for the past few weeks she’s been able to move a couple steps backwards on all fours, push back up into sitting position, turn herself around, plop on all fours and start all over… or just roll. This gets her around a room pretty efficiently, but slowly enough that sometimes we forget she can do it and are surprised when we look over and she’s moved six feet. When we place her on a hard floor, she slides backwards quite quickly.
Nalani will play independently for up to an hour, which constantly amazes me. She’s starting to pull up, and regularly makes it to her knees where she’ll continue playing in a sort of squatting position. She turns herself on her belly in her crib (which is now at the lowest level) and prefers to sleep that way. She’s just started dropping toys repeatedly in order to see us play the pick-up game over and over again.
At mealtimes, she still loves baby carrots more than anything, plus any fruit, most veggies, smashed beans, orzo pasta, and little bits of “healthy” muffins. She now asks to be fed solids at both lunch and dinner time when she sees us eating. For some reason she’s not as interested in breakfast – yet. She also popped her second tooth – bottom right – about three weeks after the first.
While playing, grabbing and discovering new things, and moving around on the floor are her main interests these days, Nalani’s other favorites include watching or grabbing at the kitty cat (who so far has shown surprising patience with our littlest family member), laughing at her sis and bro, swinging at the park, other babies, looking at that baby in the mirror, snoozing in her stroller or Ergo, and quite simply being held. So far she goes to just about anyone, as long as Mom or Dad is near and voicing approval.