8 months!!

Layla is a big 8 months today!! Here are some of the things she's been up to:

EATING! She loves to eat, and gets a lot of variety at daycare (they have an in-house chef and provide 'baby-food' versions of all their meals to the baby room). At home, she LOVES cheerios, which we introduced this week, and bananas, and she's still fond of oatmeal, sweet potato, squash, and carrots. She's decided she dislikes avocado and really, really hates quinoa, unless she gets it at daycare (she loves everything to do with daycare).

PLAYING!! She plays so hard at daycare she hardly pauses to take a nap, and when she's at home with us she plays hard too, until it's bedtime (6 pm, see below).

SLEEPING! Layla takes bedtime very seriously. If she isn't heading to bed at 6 pm, she throws a huge fit until she's happily sleeping in her crib, and then she stays in her crib until 5 or 6 am the next morning... she is a BIG sleeper.

COMMUNICATING!! Layla is communicating all over the place. At daycare, she is learning baby sign language and practices words with her friends (yesterday Layla and another girl told the daycare worker 'no! no! no! no! no!'). At home, she tries to tell us about her big days at daycare, her likes (cheerios) and dislikes (avocado), and every once in a while she says something intelligible. Her first real word was 'mama', her second was 'hi!', her third was 'dada', and her fourth, 'no!' (the last two are less frequent and I'm not sure if she really means 'no' or just discovered the new sound). Today she spoke her first sentence, which was 'hi dada!' - except it was to an empty, dark room (when I took her in to show her dada, she was stunned into silence). She is also showing lots of emotions - she hugs and has been known to give kisses, apparently she consoled an upset daycare worker the other day, she asks to be picked up and held, gets excited when she sees her mom and dad, hates getting dressed, and LOVES daycare.

GROWING!! She is still growing fast, although not as fast as when she was a little-little baby. I am very happy that she has worn the same size pants for over a month now, although she just outgrew all of her 6-month size onesies.

So there's Layla's 8-month review. I'm still working on an alleged baby book, so these are some of my notes that I will use for it. It's easy to forget some things when everything changes so fast!