Development at 8 months

Charlie Jo is officially eight months old, and boy is she changing fast! She's really starting to manipulate the moving parts of her toys rather than just shoving them immediately in her mouth. That, in addition to the pulling up and crawling, has really made playtime a lot more fun for both of us. Thank goodness she also figured out how to get back down from the standing up position. She used to pull up on something, get "stranded", and then cry. I spent a lot of time rescuing her.

Charlie can now crawl over obstacles (such as my legs and a pillow) and up the two carpeted half stairs in the bonus room. Going down them is not quite as easy. Corey was trying to teach her how to crawl down them head first tonight before I stopped him and suggested backwards as a safer alternative.

Charlie also has her first cold. I knew the time would come, but it makes me sad nonetheless. She HATES the snot sucker (aka the nasal aspirator) and HATES me wiping her nose. Luckily, she doesn't have any other symptoms and is trucking along with only some minor fussiness. We put her to bed a full half an hour early tonight because she was just beside herself tired and cranky -- probably because of the nose full of snot.

Charlie is meeting all of the developmental milestones set forth in the books I'm reading, and she's even reaching some pretty early. She's "protesting" (as the books call it) when we take away toys (or objects she thinks are toys) and learning to chew soft pieces of food. She's also learning that if she hangs a hand full of food over the edge of her highchair tray, the dogs will come running. They are eating biter biscuits right out of her hand, which she thinks is hilarious. We're not so sure Duke needs any more calories (he DID score 10 out of 10 on the obesity scale at the last vet appointment), but he seems to think he deserves a treat for putting up with the newest member of the family.

The dogs have overall been fairly good with Charlie. They are way more interested in getting past her to be petted by us, but they haven't really stepped on her or anything bad. Surprisingly, Duke is the one who is more nervous around Charlie. Connie lets Charlie climb all over her (but she did walk away while Charlie was in the middle of pulling up on her, which resulted in Charlie falling and screaming), even in her bed. Duke gets nervous and walks away if Charlie crawls toward him, and he has growled softly on a couple of occasions when Charlie tried to crawl up onto him. We're reading up on how to handle that because we're bound and determined to raise Charlie as an animal lover. Pacey the cat will hang out near Charlie, but the first move she makes toward him always sends him running for the hills. We're pretty sure that relationship will evolve over time as we teach Charlie how to pet nicely, but it may be a few years.

Charlie does notice the television, but she hasn't ever watched it for long. She loves to watch herself on the computer though!