8 Months old!

Happy 8 month birthday to Peyton!! This month again was a big one for our little girl. Her first Christmas, New Years, mastering sitting up, and even crawling!!!

Sleep:
As you might recall from her last month's blog post, Peyton started sleeping through the night on her own. However, that only lasted a few nights and then it was back to her normal waking up 1-2 times per night. After some discussion (and even upon the advice from her doctor), John and I decided to try a bit of crying it out. The first night was tough!!!! It was so hard for us both to lay in bed and listen to her cry in the next room without going in to rock her back to sleep or feed her. After about an hour and 20 minutes, she was asleep and slept the rest of the night. The 2nd night was even harder, just because we were beginning to wonder if we were making progress at all. Again, after about an hour and 20 minutes, she fell asleep for the rest of the night. We agreed that we would give it a try for one more night, and if we weren't seeing improvement, then we would decide it wasn't for us. To our surprise, on the 3rd night she slept all the way through, not waking at all!!! We were both happy we stuck with it, and she is now sleeping through the night pretty much every night (with the exception of one night here and there). It is pure bliss!!!! She still goes down to bed at 8:00pm every night, and wakes at about 7am. She continues to take 2 naps per day, each lasting about 1 hour-1 hour and a half. We switched her over to the Halo sleep sacs a couple of months ago, and they are working well.

Food:
Peyton is a great eater!! So far with solids, she has liked everything we have given her. Some of the new things she is eating now are tofu (diced up and rolled in cracker crumbs so its easier for her to pick up), banana, papaya and green beans. She loves her "puffs," which are tiny crackers that help her learn to chew, but that melt in her mouth quickly so there is less chance of choking. She continues to receive breast milk through a bottle, about 6-7oz every 3-4 hours during the day.

Clothing:
Peyton is currently wearing 9-18 month clothing.

Christmas:
Peyton has a great first Christmas!! On Christmas eve, we went over to Jan and Tom's house where we had dinner and gifts. Peyton was very spoiled! Christmas morning started off at home with just the three of us. We opened gifts and played with some toys at home. From there we went over to Nana and Papa's house to celebrate with them. We even found out that Peyton will be getting a new cousin this July!! We were so happy to hear the news from Colin and Anna, and can't wait to meet the new little Minzel. She also got to open gifts with her Sumi cousins, Kalei, Mason and Alex. After Nana and Papa's, we headed over to Kirkpatrick's and celebrated there. Peyton sure received lots of love and gifts from the family, and I think she had a great time.

Milestones:

• Crawling: Peyton started crawling at about 7 1/2 months
• Grabbing food: She has mastered being able to pick up a piece of food and feed herself
• Sippy Cup use: We started her on a sippy cup the week of her 8 month birthday. She is continuing to work on the use of it.
• Sitting up: She definitely has sitting up down, and can even go from a laying down position to sitting up on her own, and therefore we had to lower the crib to its lowest level for safety purposes.
• Clapping: She loves to mimic us and clap her hands together.
• Waving: This one she is still working on, but will sometimes mimic us and wave bye-bye.
• Words: Continues to say Da-da, and now also is saying Ma-ma more often. On occasion, she will also say Ba-ba as well. I don't think she is yet saying these words to the person or item. She also plays copycat with sounds, if we make a sound then she can make a sound back.
• Big girl bath: We bought Peyton a new bathtub to go inside the big bathtub now that she is sitting up. She has lots more room to play and loves her bath toys that she got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Kirkpatrick.