Meri is now 8.5 months old, and is getting more and more interactive, so I wanted to share her developments and personality with everyone, and keep a record of it for her later.
On November 18 (her 8-month birthday), she perfected the art of standing on her own without any support, from a squatting position. Now she loves doing this, and will do it whenever she gets the chance. At first she was so excited, she even woke up at night to do it. Waking up to see a baby wobbly looming over you like a bear is kind of terrifying :p
Here's the girl in action:
Around the same time, or maybe a little before, she started walking by holding onto furniture or our hands. And just recently, she's gotten to where she'll walk by pushing toys around. Today, she was walking around by pushing her little potty across the floor. I wish I had a video... :)
Speaking of her potty, our elimination communication is still improving by the day :) She's getting all her poos in the potty, and a lot of pees (She's still too busy to interrupt her playtime to pee, but since I don't have to clean up poopy diapers, I'm not complaining :p)
We're still trying to teach her some signs, but it's even more interesting and exciting seeing her initiate her own language with us. When she needs to potty, she'll go up to the potty, pick up the bowl, and bang it on the ground. She also loves playing in the bath, so when she wants to do that, she'll throw a toy into the tub and look up at me. Likewise, when she wants out of the tub, she'll throw a toy overboard and look from it to me expectantly.
On November 23, she got her first haircut. Her bangs had been getting in her eyes, so we wanted to trim them. We were so worried about not cutting her, though, that we didn't even think about cutting them evenly until after the fact, so she now has a very...avant-garde haircut: :p
Then the next week, he did the same thing, but maybe 10 times rowdier. He walked up to her immediately, grabbed her, and leaned in for a kiss on the mouth! All the moms' mouths were gaping--it was kind of embarrassing! He kept coming up to her and hugging her, and whenever I was holding her, he would slap my hands away so he could hold her. I'm not really sure what to make of all this, but he seemed so earnestly in love with her that it was too sweet to stop him.
Some other new stuff: She's learning to give high fives, which is super cute. She won't settle for just one, though. After the first one, she wants to keep slapping my hand :) She's been high-fiving, among other tasks, with her left hand, so it's likely she's a southpaw like her Gigi.
I can't pinpoint when this started ,but she's started saying Mama. She often adds several more "ma's" to the end to make it even more legit. (She says Papa, or Baba, too sometimes, but seemingly at random :p).
She loooooooves sharing, especially food. Her one condition, though, is that you put whatever she gives you into your mouth; otherwise she demands it back. She'll hand her blocks or food to me and wait for me to put it into my mouth, and then she'll giggle and try to dig it out. :p Digging it out is less successful when she gives something to Scout to eat, but she still thinks it's hilarious :p
Light switches: they make the lights turn on and off! This was a very exciting discovery, and she loves wielding the power to summon or banish light :D
She's also starting to like playing with her toys more (instead of just chewing on them, which is how she used to play with toys). She'll stack blocks, put things into other things, take things out of things, rummage around with various toys, press buttons, and interact with these sensory blocks that we have, especially the ones with colored lenses that make the room look blue or red. She also gets the biggest thrill out of climbing. She can climb on our couch by herself, and she frequently does. She's even learning to climb down feet-first, thank God :p Boxes are also really fun to climb around in.
She still kind of likes peek-a-boo, but not as much. It used to be that she would crawl out into the hallway, and we could get her to come back by calling out, "Where's Meridian?!" and then yelling "Peek-a-boo!" when she came back, to her giggling delight....but she caught on that that was our lazy way of not having to chase her, so that no longer works :p
We don't have a high chair for her, so we all eat together. A free-range baby during mealtime means that she grabs whatever she wants from us, so she generally shares whatever we're eating. We try to eat low-salt, healthy foods because of this, so it's making us a lot healthier. :)
Besides mama milk, it seems like her current favorite food is apple. She just holds a whole apple and bites out chunks with her two little teeth; I think it feels good on her teething gums. She also really seems to like tofu, rice, beans, any kind of soup, kombucha, lentils.....I'll probably think of more later--like I said, she eats whatever we eat, so it's hard to narrow down favorites :p
Here's her eating an apple and being adorable:
I'll end with a few pics from our photo shoot with my friend, Lili. We didn't get any posed shots, really--Lili instead followed Meri wherever she wanted to go, hence the toilet shots--because Meridian wasn't in a mood to be photographed, but I kind of like that that way the photos captured her independent spirit and strong will :)
Oh yeah, she also thinks it's hilarious when I put that sock on my nose--shrug :p Other things she finds hilarious: Papa making monkey noises, Papa counting like Count Dracula, Scout doing anything...:p
Until next time!
