8 months.

Love my little 8 month chunk of a baby.

Baby boy is doing all sorts of things these days - a master of sitting, flapping his arms, smiling in the morning, walking with mom and dads help, drumming, babbling, playing the piano, whispering, mimicking sounds, splashing in the bath, smiling at himself in the mirror, turning in a circle on the floor, and snuggling. Oh this boy loves to snuggle. He has mastered the intense Henry stare. He's such a thoughtful little guy.
We haven't been too pushy with the solids. Henry's never loved mushy purees, but he loves to gum and suck on peaches, plums, cucumbers, bananas, and avocado. I've been researching baby led weaning and that is really making sense to me and what Henry needs. So we continue to offer rice cereal and other purees around breakfast, but we're not worried if he doesn't eat any of it. Food before 1 is just for fun, as the saying goes. We're also working with him every day to help him learn to crawl. One thing I'm learning about Henry is he gets frustrated pretty quickly, and needs a lot of encouragement to try to do something hard. So we get down on the floor with him, clap and cheer, march around singing and clapping, and other things to help him learn how to move his little round belly off the ground. Although, to be honest I feel like we'll want to hit ourselves when he starts crawling and we have to really keep a close eye on him and not to mention BABY proof this old house of ours.
He's about 50/50 on sleeping through the night these days. He did it last night, and woke up around 5am this morning. Bleary eyed, I went to pick him up and he just wrapped himself around my hips, like "mom, do not even THINK about putting me back in my crib!" So off to mom and dads bed he went, to snuggle with mom (ahhhh my favorite thing is the one hour of snuggling we typically have in the mornings). When he wakes up from that little snuggle session around 6:30am, he gives me the sweetest smile. We rub noses, which makes him laugh every time, and I sit him up so he can start playing with dad - time to wake up dad - grab the beard, pull on the shirt, bite the nose, whatever it takes! Dad wakes up and pulls up the blinds, letting the morning sun in. We're all awake and smiling (ok Henry is smiling...some of us are a little grumpy sometimes, ha.). It's good to be all together. Having this family of mine brings me more joy than I've ever known before.