Jace is 8 months

Yeah, that’s my baby.  Over the weekend, Jace turned 8 months old.  I’ll show you what he’s been doing NON STOP lately:

Pulls up.  On everything.  Even on my legs if I’m standing in one spot for too long.  He even gets brave and stands completely on his own for a few seconds at a time.  He’s not cruising, I don’t care what you say – he’s not cruising, don’t tell me he’s cruising.  Is he cruising?  No, he’s not.  Just double-checking.  I’m paranoid.

I hate to break it to you, folks, the last month has NOT been good as far as sleeping-through-the-night goes.  Some of you are probably smirking, thinking to yourselves, “It’s about time she knows what it’s like to get up multiple times a night!”.  Yeah, yeah, it’s no fun.  The last several nights he has slept through the night, but for a few weeks there is was hit and miss.  Emphasis on miss.  Those bottom two teeth are now almost completely in and giving him fewer problems, but I can see the whole scary mess of top teeth descending, ever descending until – BAM! – we’ll go through this teething nonsense again.  It’s just hard on everyone.  The runny noses, the pain, the sleepless nights.  But, what can you do?  I’d prefer he have teeth.  Life will be much easier for him with teeth as opposed to just gums.

What else is there to say?  Jace loves me.  He’s going through what Josh and I refer to as the “mother-boy” stage.  Shout out to my Arrested Development friends.  That should make you smile.  He takes it very, very personally if I should – oh, I don’t know? – turn my back to him for any reason.  Since he is super mobile now and very curious, I can’t just plop him down on the floor anymore while I set out to make supper, empty the dishwasher, do the laundry.  Because of this, the exersaucer has become important.  Also important?  My ability to be able to do everything with him on my hip.  

We’re still nursing – oh, I’d say, 4 or 5 times a day – but he’s also getting fruits, vegetables, cereal and sweets every day.  Just kidding about the sweets.  He eats solids 3 or 4 times a day.  P.S. This is the longest I’ve nursed a child.  With Jude, I only made it to 6 months, seeing as how I was also pregnant for the final 2 of those months.  P.P.S.  I do not recommend this family planning (as if) choice.  With Jett, I was sooooo ready to be done with nursing at the 8 month mark.  I can only describe what I was going through as burnout.  After having been pregnant and/or nursing for so long at that point, I just had to give it up for my sanity.  But with this last baby, I can totally see myself nursing Jace to the year mark and then putting him on whole milk.  In an admittedly prideful way – I hope I can avoid giving him formula.  I’ll really feel like I’ve accomplished something at that point… sad, huh?  There is no shame in formula, heck, I depended on the stuff for the first 2 babies, but this time around I have greater patience, enough milk, desire for that beautiful bonding time (I still think “this is such a cool thing to be able to do” each time I nurse), I’m going for a personal best.  I was worried that being sick last weekend would cause my supply to dwindle, but I don’t think it has.

One last thing: Jace seems to be on the small-to-medium side.  Size-wise.  This is unusual for me to be dealing with.  He can still pretty easily wear 6 month clothes and some 3-6 month onesies.  His next well-child visit isn’t until next month, so I don’t know what his stats are, but I’d guess he’s a smallish-medium boy.