So our big girl is 8 months old today. She celebrated by taking only 30 minute naps and working on her first tooth! It hasn't popped through, but the bottom right gum is all red and swollen and I can see the tooth working its way up. I was beginning to think that we'd have to get her dentures someday soon so she could chew food eventually. Disaster averted. She is otherwise working hard at standing while holding on, and as this picture demonstrates, apparently she can manage to stand temporarily on her own. She is also really getting the hang of walking holding my hands and takes much more balanced steps. After a few feet, however, she gets impatient with me holding her hands and she tries to let go. Her independent streak is blazing through. Her balance and strength is getting better each day and I think that she'll be cruising very soon. She's also reluctantly making a few efforts at crawling, but can't seem to coordinate the bottom and the chest being off the ground together. It's an either or issue now and she won't tolerate trying for long.
Aside from these new developments, Erin continues to be a pretty easy going and happy baby. She is starting to let me snuggle with her for a few seconds from time to time which is really nice. She still has favorite books and we read "I Like Black and White" many, many times a day. Luckily for our sanity, she'll let us sneak in a few others into the rotation and sit through a few pages before heading back to the usual repertoire. She's still a great eater and has expanded her diet to include many fruits and veggies. We haven't found anything yet that she won't eat, but is less fond of pumpkin and prunes, she loves her pears and mango and will still happily "clap clap" for a bowl of rice cereal.
Erin is still stalled out a bit on the verbalizing. We saw an ENT and had her hearing formally tested before Christmas, luckily it was normal. So now we're considering a speech evaluation through county. Hopefully she just falls on slow end of normal and we (I) just need to be patient, but I want to know if there are things that we should be doing as well. She is still growling and squealing and tonight we had a "conversation" over dinner which was good. Maybe she's just going to be the strong silent type.
Laura came to watch Erin yesterday while I took care of a few loose ends at the hospital and she reported on how protective Duncan is getting of Erin. Apparently he gets really upset and growls when Laura takes Erin's pacifier away and is always underfoot to make sure no one mistreats Erin. He doesn't usually watch me this closely so either he's decided that I'm a lost cause or he's trying to stay on my good side so I'll feed him. I guess we'll have to keep an eye on this because I don't want him to get nutty with people.
Next week is my last week home before heading back to work. I'm not all that excited about going back and I'll be heading back to do a month on the bone marrow transplant service. Ick. The good news is, however, that Matt has next week off, so we will have time home together for the first time in months. I can't wait.
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