Bonnie & Clyve: Emmett at 8 and 9 months

I know the baby updates are really interesting to everyone reading my blog. Who doesn’t want to know Emmett’s favorite food? This blog has morphed into more of a journal than I ever intended it to. But something about every little thing that Emmett does makes me want to remember it all—the good and the bad. Which is why I always have a million Instagram stories every day. And why 36 GB of my phone storage is photos and videos of Emmett. He’s almost 10 months now, so of course I’ll be writing about him at 8 and 9 months.

8 months:

He’s finally sitting up, but he doesn’t know how to get himself into a sitting position. We have to do it for him. And when he’s done sitting up, he just faceplants to get onto his belly.

He loves cords and strings. He tangled himself up in a cord and wrapped it around his neck somehow. So, there is all the motivation I need to never let him out of my sight. I’m not sure how to babyproof against cords, so send all the ideas my way.

When he’s super hungry, I’ll start feeding him and then he’ll help the milk come out faster by squeezing my boob for me.

He’s super frustrated about not being able to crawl. He can’t decide between being lazy or being independent, so he gets pretty fussy. He’ll do a sort of roll-crawling by rolling onto his back, and then rolling back the other direction and he’s usually an inch farther than he was. But it takes a lot of effort and he’s only motivated enough to do this if we put the Apple TV remote in front of him. It’s his favorite earthly possession. Oh and then when he’s within arm’s reach of the remote, he’ll stop roll-crawling and just streeeetch his arm as far as he can and use his fingers to slide it towards him. He’s gonna be a real good 1^st baseman if he can get over his laziness.

He will fake cough at you if he wants to get your attention. I think it probably originated from when he was really young and anytime he would cough, I would immediately look to him to make sure he was breathing and wasn’t choking on something. So he has learned that coughing will always get our attention. My child is a genius.

We are pretty sure that he waves at us, but he’s not good at doing it on command, so we can’t really be sure he’s not just spazzing out with his hands. Parents like to think the best though, right?

This has been the first age when we really felt like he was understanding what we were saying. We’ll tell him to give us a kiss and he’ll open up his mouth and nuzzle into us and make a moaning sound. We think it’s his way of trying to say “muah”. He loves kissing the tops of our heads especially. We won’t even ask for a kiss and we bow our head in front of him and he’ll start kissing it. Such a little sweetheart.

He also knows when we say “milk” and “dada” and “mama” and “Emmett”, of course. Oh, and if we say “jump”, he always looks over at his jumper toy. He’s basically a child prodigy.

He’ll laugh really hard at me when I close my eyes, so he ends up giggling through prayers. No reverence in this family.

He has a little buddy named Nicholas who is 5 months older than him. He is OBSESSED with everything Nicholas does. Whenever he sees him, he starts cracking up at him. His family goes to our church and during Sacrament meeting, Emmett will hear Nicholas or spot him across the room and he lights up and starts laughing. So, there’s another reason why he’ll never be reverent. It makes church a lot more entertaining though.

He has started throwing little tantrums, which is not my favorite. He’ll throw his head back and cry if I take something away from him or he doesn’t get his way. How are you supposed to discipline a baby? I’m not even sure he understands me most of the time, so he just thinks I’m a bully. But he’s still young enough that when he throws his head back, I start tickling his neck and then he’s laughing crazily and then crying and then laughing again. Most people think his cry sounds like a laugh, but there is a very faint difference that only Billy and I can usually detect. Little babe is still figuring out his emotions.

He loves to kick his feet onto the ground—especially when he’s in his bed. No idea what that’s about. At least he only does it when he’s happy. For now.

He has some pretty bad texture aversion. I have been trying to give him chunkier food but he much prefers baby food. Like I tried to give him applesauce and he made such a disgusted face. Then I gave him the apple baby food and he ate the whole thing. I probably should have done baby-led weaning with him but I was too lazy.

He’ll twist his tongue around whenever he’s deep in thought and I’m actually really impressed with his skills. Some adults can’t even do that, but that may just be a genetic thing. Billy and I both have a high level of tongue skills.

We were FaceTiming my sister, Erin, one day and she said to him “I l-l-l-l-love you!” and he started trying to say it back! At first I thought it was a fluke, but for the next few weeks, whenever we would say “I l-l-l-l-love you”, he would do the same thing.

9 months

He still can’t get himself up into a sitting position, even when we try to motivate him to work at it. He just cries that we are taunting him with a toy. He might start walking before he ever learns to sit up on his own. He’s already trying to walk all over the place. He’ll still fall onto his face to get onto his belly. He’s gotten really good at softly face-planting onto the carpet so it’s a much smoother transition. But the other day, he did it on the hard wood floor and busted his lip. It was his first bloody wound (besides his shots) and it made me so sad.

His top two teeth came in at the same time, but it took them about 2 weeks to finally break through. Those were a rough couple of weeks. Then, they came through and he has the biggest gap. But, he smiles by baring all his teeth and scrunching his nose and arching his eyebrows. It’s actually a pretty ugly face, but it’s so ugly that it’s freaking cute. He will smile at anyone and everyone who looks at him. And he’ll give you an especially big smile if you remark on how cute he is. We get stopped in public a lot because he is such a little charmer. He never really has had any separation anxiety, which I guess I should be grateful for. But he’s such a little extrovert that it makes me feel like he’s all grown up and doesn’t need his momma anymore. Until he crawls right into a wall. Which happens on a daily basis.

Which brings me to—he’s army crawling all over the place. He’s pretty freaking speedy, so I don’t know if he’ll ever crawl on his hands and knees like a normal baby. Our baby proofing now mostly involves making sure that we are vacuuming more than normal because he like to pick dust bunnies up and put them in his mouth.

He’s definitely waving at us and strangers now. He still won’t do it on command, but sometimes he’ll do it like 3 minutes after we ask him to, so that’s progress at least.

We’ve been trying to teach him sign language since he was 6 months old. He has started signing milk, but he mostly just does it to show that he wants something.

He also has started signing “all done”, but that only came because he was highly motivated ever since he started hating baby food. He will only eat something that he sees I am eating too and I’m definitely not about to eat that pureed chicken and rice. But I should be grateful, because he’s finally over his texture aversion! I was worried he’d be a 2-year old only eating pureed foods, so I’m really proud that he will eat normal food now.

He has also started feeding himself. He was probably a little late to the game on this milestone, but that is mostly my fault. I didn’t want to have him start making messes and getting his hands all grubby, so I’ve always fed him. Then, once I realized he should be practicing feeding himself, he picked it up in 3 days. So he was probably more than ready.

He eats almost everything (except baby food). And as of 9.5 months, he is completely done with breastmilk. Halle-freaking-lujah. I was never a huge fan of breastfeeding, and now that I’m done I’m pretty happy about it. I was actually just trying to go down to nursing only at morning and at night. But once he’d had a bottle for most of the day, he wouldn’t nurse at night. So, I was only breastfeeding in the morning. So, after about a week of that, I just stopped. I felt bad and guilty about it for a little bit, but it’s so amazing to feel like I have my body back to myself. I can put as much trash into it as I want!

Emmett still sleeps 12 hours at night like an angel baby. From about 7:30-7:30. His naps are even getting better—on a good day, he’ll take 2 naps that are about an hour and fifteen minutes each. That is some serious improvement from his 4-5 half hour naps a day.

Now that he’s got the pincer grasp perfected, he points at everything. And usually says “dadadada” when pointing at it. But mostly he points at the fan and pictures of himself. He LOVES the fan. We ask him where the fan is and he immediately turns his head to go find it. The other day he was signing milk and then pointing at the fan and that was his way of telling us to turn the fan on.

He rolls like a mad man during diaper changes and it DRIVES ME CRAZY. And then as soon as I’m done, he is content to just lie there on his back. He also likes to grab his penis during diaper changes. I’m terrified he’s just gonna grab it and point it at me and pee in my face one of these days.

He has been grinding his teeth and I want to rip my hair out every time he does it. Worst sound in the entire world. He has started to do it less and less, thankfully, but I just envision him grinding his new teeth down to little stubs.

He still gives us big slobbery kisses (sometimes with some teeth thrown in) and moans while he’s kissing us. If you bow your head down in front of him, you can get him to kiss your hair 100% of the time.

He’s the laziest baby I’ve ever seen. Most of the time, he refuses to hold his bottle. The only way he will hold it is if he is flat on his back. He doesn’t really understand gravity yet, so he’ll try and drink it will he’s sitting up, but doesn’t know quite how to tip it. We keep trying to teach him to drink out of the Munchkin 360 sippy cups, but he will only drink out of it if we hold it for him.

The only thing he's not lazy about is playing catch. He would catch and throw a ball back and forth all day if we let him. He doesn't catch it in the air (to Billy's disappointment), but if we roll it to him, he's actually really good at catching it and picking it up. He started out throwing it back by trying to grab it with one hand and then he would accidentally fling it back to us. But, now he's getting a lot better at picking it up with 2 hands and dropping it again so that it bounces to us. I hate how boys are always expected to play sports and like cars and all that crap, so I got him a baby doll in addition to the balls. He wants nothing to do with the babydoll, unless he's trying to bounce her head on the floor like he does with his ball. I don't know if this preference is because he's a boy or because he's a Strong boy. It's in their genes to be good at every sport.

But if he's ever gonna play baseball like his parents, he's gonna have to toughen up about grass. He can't stand the stuff. We think it's cause he's a little city baby. The first time he touched the grass, he literally gagged and wiped his hand off on his shirt. My new favorite hobby is trying to get him to go into the grass. You can see how conflicted he is if you put a ball just out of reach from the blanket. He wants to get the ball so badly, but he's too afraid of touching the grass. He's getting a lot better about it, but he's still pretty tense around it. We did try to take him golfing the other day and he didn't mind touching the grass on the fairway or greens. He just can't stand the rough, which I can totally relate to.

He is such a cheeseball. He will be losing his shit for me at Target (it's always Target because he hates their shopping carts), but then a stranger glances in his directions and he gives them the biggest grin. He definitely knows how to milk his audience.

He fake laughs at us all day long. A girl at our church told us, “That is really confusing. I can’t tell if he is laughing or crying.” His laugh and his cry sound very similar, so it takes a very trained ear to know whether he’s happy or sad. He also has started laughing and then doing a sharp gasping noise when he’s catching his breath. We love our crazy little faker boy.

We flew out to Utah for his Uncle Zach and Aunt Linda's wedding.

He could stare out at the cars all day

Watching TV while getting spoonfed

Really into General Conference

Hanging at the Bean

It was freezing

Twins

We did a "Flat Stanley" project for my niece, Hadley, and it was so much fun!

First time sitting in a shopping cart!

He didn't last very long

He scooted under the bookshelf and I took a picture before rescuing him

He instantly looks 2 years older in a hat

All ready for church!

Dad lets him watch TV

Dad hates him in this outfit

Hanging out on Lake Michigan

First time at a playground

First time on a swing. Not a huge fan

First time in the stroller without the carseat attachment. He loved it!

He may have gotten a little tired from sitting up for so long though

Trying to keep him quiet in church. It didn't work.

Chilling at the park

He loved every exhibit at the zoo that had water

Lincoln Park Zoo on one of the first warm days of the year

He would have sat here for hours if we let him

He's a great little lunch buddy

Bath time is his favorite

His first encounter with grass. He would touch it, gag and shudder, then wipe his hands off on his shirt.

His favorite part of the playground is playing with the holes on the floor

I love them

I got him a baby doll, because boys and girls can play with any type of toy. He ended up using her head like a ball.

Target shopping carts are still really hard for him

I walked in on this.

World's sweetest baby

Time to get some new church clothes for him

Besties. Please notice how yellow the hands of his sleep sack are from where he sucks on his hands

Starting to like the swing a little more

Emmett's bestie, Henry, came to visit us before he moves to London.

My bestie, Mika, came too. :) We took the babes to the Aquarium.

Emmett kept giving Henry kisses

World's laziest baby spotted at Shake Shack

Mika came to visit us all the way in Grenada, and 3 times in Chicago. (I told her she was probably pregnant when she came to visit, and she went home and took a positive pregnancy test). She is seriously the best friend you could ever find. I'm so glad we had babies together. Can't wait to go see her in London town!