The Eighth Month

Benjamin is now eight months old. It's taken me awhile to get this update posted because I kept forgetting to take pictures, and then, once I did, I had to find a new online photo editing site because Picnik has moved to Google+. I tried out Be Funky and found it to be very similar to Picnik. If you can't shell out the big bucks for Photo Shop (I wish!), this is a reasonable alternative.

Ben's eighth month passed in a blur of activity... we moved to Ecuador on April 12th and have been busily trying to establish ourselves here. Ben celebrated his first Easter just before we left the States; he met his Uncle Josh and Aunt Julie and a passle of cousins; and he cut his first two teeth at about the same time that he came down with roseola (aka "baby measels")! Those were a fun few days. He is so close to crawling. He can get up on all fours and even move his hands and knees, but he generally just stays in one place or even goes backwards, which he finds extremely frustrating! I still nurse him once or twice a day, but he is now bottle-fed for the most part. And of course he is eating solid foods... interestingly, he much prefers to eat what we are all eating rather than the jarred baby food. More flavor, maybe? It's fine by me as jarred baby food is rather expensive here. We are still working on his night-waking, trying to help him learn to sleep through the night. I so look forward to the day when I can count on several hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.

Just a couple of other things that I want to make sure and remember about Benjamin as a baby. For several months now, he has been what I call a "skin-grabber." He will use his little fists to grab handfuls of my skin, usually on my neck or upper arms, and squeeze. He doesn't do it to be mean, of course, but it can be quite painful, and sometimes, he actually gives me bruises or red markings on my skin. Lately, he has also taken to grabbing handfuls of his brothers' hair when they are playing together! They are quickly learning to keep their heads out of reach of his tiny hands!

The other interesting thing that Benjamin has done ever since he was a tiny baby, is sleep with his face covered up by his blankets. He likes to pull the blanket up over his face and burrow down inside it, and this is how he likes to fall asleep. At first, it really freaked me out when I would walk in and find him completely buried in the blanket, but I don't worry so much about it now that he's older.

Here are a couple of pictures of 8-month old Ben: