Emerson is 8 Months Old

Our sweet little girl is already 8 months old!! People always say time flies, but I never really truly knew how that felt until I had kids. It's unbelievable. Anyways, Emerson is doing so well. She's been completely sleeping through the night for about a month now and usually sleeps about 11 - 12 hours each night and also takes two pretty long naps each day. She completely refuses a pacifier and acts like it's an insult when we try to give it to her, so she just cries herself to sleep only for a few minutes or sucks on her sleepsack and falls asleep right away. We are just able to lay her down awake and she talks or fusses herself to sleep. The coolest thing is that she doesn't wake up crying anymore, but just talks for a while. It's so nice to be able to have a little warning before having to get her up.

She's eating well too...she nurses like a champ and is now also eating lot's of cereals and fruits and veggies and even some little snacks which she tries to chew with her two little front teeth. She is getting so big too, wearing 9-12 (mostly 12) month clothes. We're not sure how much she weighs, but we know it's a lot because it's basically impossible to carry her while she's in her carseat, so we always take her out when we go places now. By the way, she hates being in her carseat and hates riding in the car...which is too bad!

She sits up really really well and can go from a laying position to sitting up easily. She catches herself almost every time she starts tipping. She is also super super close to crawling now...should be anytime now and can crawl into our laps. She's starting to try to pull herself into a standing position and loves standing all the time.

She's a SCREAMER and I mean screamer. She's unbelievably loud no matter how she is feeling. Did I mention this girl can scream?? She copies us really well with playing with toys or other actions and she's starting to mimic sounds a little bit. She says baba, mama, lala and of course our favorite, aaaaaahhhhhh! She's starting to get frustrated and very vocal when Zane takes her toys or if she can't reach something, etc. But she thinks Zane is absolutely hilarious and wants to be part of everything that he is doing and hates being left alone for any amount of time.

She is smiling more than ever lately and is more fun that ever to be around. We love her more than we ever imagined being able to.

We went to Lil' Monkey Bizness last week and she got to play in the baby part. She loved all the new toys and was super entertained. I can't wait till she can crawl and climb on all the stuff there. Actually, I take that back, I'm a little scared about her starting to crawl...life changes big time!!! :)

She has pretty bad "stranger anxiety" most of the time. She's always been pretty clingy to me, but it's gotten really bad lately. She just starts getting this sad lip look to warn us and then she breaks out in a full out cry pretty quickly and frantically starts looking for and reaching for me. This is Pappy trying to hold her...she usually warms up to him after he sings in his very low voice, but it takes a while.
This video is over a week old now, so since then she's gotten even closer to crawling and has even taken a few "steps" here and there.


She's been getting tired of "baby" toys and has been enjoying bigger toys to play with. This lion that she got for Christmas has kept her pretty entertained and happy.