8 Months

Papillon turns 8 months old today, and if its possible, she is getting more and more fun every day!


I don't know if she is hugely bigger than last month, but she certainly has more hair!
A recent make-shift weigh in on our largely inaccurate bathroom scale suggests that she is over the 15lb mark, but most likely not anywhere near 16 yet.

Oh well, her littleness is endearing.

At 8 months, Papillon....


....has become a morning person. She goes to be between 7:30 and 8pm and gets up between 6:15 and 6:45am. I can't complain cause that is still an solid nights sleep, but it has taken me a bit to adjust to having her up that early.

....is still largely on a 3 nap routine. Sometimes though if we get a long morning nap, she will only take 2 naps. Naps still range form about 1 hour to some times 2 and sometimes, on a rare occassion 2.5 hours.

...eats 3 meals a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And she loves it. New foods include green beans, apples, white potatoes and oatmeal.

...nurses usually 5 times a day.

....wears 6-9 month clothes.

...still doesn't roll over much. (thought she rolled over twice this week! That's right, twice, in one week! Its like a record! Haha). But she is super talented at getting from a sitting position to her stomach and then from her stomach onto her knees like she's going to crawl. Then she shoves herself backwards. So scootching backwards is still all we've got.

...is still gnawing, and still no teeth.

...loves to "read" magazines. Actually she just loves paper. Tearing it is fun, crinkling it is fun, anything with paper is super fun. Her particularly favorite hobby is helping me "clip coupons"; she shreds the ones that I don't want and love every minute of it.

...is an amazingly easy baby. She has become more and more happy with playing by herself. She will just sit on the floor and play for long periods of time. One morning she sat there for over an hour without me even having to hand her a new toy. Yay for a low-maintenance baby!

...is working on waving and giving kisses. I don't think she knows what she is doing yet, but occasionally she stumbles on the right action when we ask her to do these things and we praise her to know end, which she finds hugely amusing. I think by next month though, she will be a pro.


We recently re-discovered this baseball cap and I think its adorable. Papillon sometimes gets distracted by the brim and she tries to look up to see what it is, but obviously the hat moves up too. So she looks round and round trying to find it. It's a cruel, but adorable trick.

This is generally how she gets from a sitting position to her stomach - via a face plant. She can do it without the face plant, but this way is much faster, and as long as she's not on the kitchen tile when she does it, she doesn't mind it at all.

Happy 2/3s of a year, Papillon!
Love you lots!

How we roll.

Embracing the forward facing carry. So Papillon can see the world.
Mei Tai forward-carry is not the most intuitive carry, and I am probably doing it wrong...but Papillon and I were both comfortable, and she was definitely secure, so we went with it.

And yes, I neglected to crop my toothpaste out of the bottom of the picture. Adds context to the picture, right??

While Dad was gone

While Mon Amour was out of the country, Papillon and I did a bit of traveling ourselves. Local traveling, but traveling nontheless. We had grand plans to visit all kinds of friends, but I got hit with a nasty flu bug midway through the adventures and we had to cut out some of the fun :-(

In light of my illness, we found ourselves at my parents house a lot (nothing beats being around your mom when you are sick). And Papillon had lots of fun playing with her Nannie and Grandpa.

Here she is playing with some toys while waiting eagerly for some lunch.


Ok, enough cute smiles, she says. Where's my lunch?

My mom blew some bubbles at Papillon, which she thought was hilarious. And of course, the lots of interesting toys was delightful as well.

In the evenings, it was time for chilling with Grandpa. Grandpa and Papillon share a bedtime, only Grandpa gets up at 2am (he's a baker) and Papillon sleeps in until almost 7am.


We had lots of fun times while Mon Amour was gone, but we really did miss him. I was so thankful to have friends and family to visit with while he was gone. I don't know how single moms, or moms whose husbands are gone a lot do it!
It's not that I couldn't feed Papillon, play with her, and put to bed by myself; technically I can do that. But, goodness! are the days ever long when there is no one new in your day to break it up. Just knowing we would have someone else at the dinner table other than Papillon and myself was fantastic! The few nights we did dinner alone felt like one slow plodding towards bedtime and I realized how much I take having my husband around for granted.
So yes, while Mon Amour was gone, I learned to be even more grateful for him. And to you moms who find yourselves dining with just your kids many evenings on end, my hats off to you. I don't know how you do it, but keep up the good work!

Foreign Adventures

Last week, Mon Amour returned from a business trip to India.
I love that Mon Amour's job takes him on fun adventures like this. (and I think he likes that fact too).


Since it was a business trip, most of his trip looked something like this:

Sitting in on trainings and what not.

But over the weekend, he and his colleague were able to take a day trip to the Taj Mahal (You really can't go to India without seeing the Taj).


Mon Amour tells me that the pictures don't do it justice and that it really is pretty intensely amazing.

The women's clothes are also fantastic! Look at those colors!

Mon Amour got Papillon a legit Sauri. It won't fit her for a while, so you will have to wait a bit for the cuteness (don't hold your breath, it will probably be like a year...), but trust me, it will be cute.

I really have no desire to visit India. The crowds, cows in the road, and general mayhem scares me, so I was more than happy to stay home. But, I have to say, pictures of the Red Fort (a massive red fortress just a couple miles from the Taj Mahal) made me consider changing my mind. This place looks AMAZING!

The pictures Mon Amour took of the Taj were pretty sweet, but the pictures from the Red Fort were mind boggling! And apparently its a huge labyrinth of awesomeness. Look at this sweet inlay stuff:


So yes, Mon Amour had some grand adventures. And maybe someday if I get over my fear of crowds (and somehow save up enough money for that 14 hour plane trip...) he and I can go on such a grand adventure together. Maybe. Someday.

For now though, Mon Amour will travel and Papillon and I will have fun adventures at home. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Hilarious


It's not even movie Monday and yet its an adorable movie! What can I say, this was too cute too wait any longer. Papillon recently met our friends' tiny, adorable dog, and she thought it was the funniest little creature she had ever met.



I think Papillon is going to grow up to be a dog person.

Bath Time

Papillon has always tolerated bath time pretty well, for the most part seeming not to mind it, but never really enjoying it. Just last week, however, for the first time she fully embraced bathtime fun. She splashed and splashed and had a grand ol time.

These photos were taken shortly before this new found love of the water, so she is still a bit on the fence about it.

Here she is not entirely sure why we are taking pictures...

Here she is with sudsy hair.


Alfalfa do!

Post-bathtime towel snuggles.

More snuggles, cause nothing beats snuggling with a clean baby.

And the post-bath look. Hair straight up!

Eventually there will be some video footage of serious bathtime fun. For now, hopefully this cuteness has sufficed.