8 Month Updates

I tried to keep my promise to post James' Christmas pics, but blogger has not been cooperating. I gave up after a while, but will try again as soon as my patience has returned.

In the mean time I am due for a James update, since he has mastered so many new skills in the past month.

He has always loved the stairs, and has been trying to climb them since he learned to crawl. Right about his 8 month birthday, he somehow figured it out and scooted all the way up both flights like it was no biggie. We must invest in another gate asap!

Round about the same time (a few weeks ago), he started standing up on his own for a few seconds at a time. Now he can balance himself for 5 seconds or so before he plops on his behind. He also loves to cruise on his walker across the den...I think he is over this crawling stage and wants to move on to bigger better things.

Grandma's efforts to teach him to wave and clap have finally paid off. Now you can waive bye bye and he will waive back, or clap and he will mimic you.

We have decided to move his nursery downstairs sometime in the next month, because he has taken over the guest room and it just doesn't make sense for him to be upstairs anymore. We realized this after David went to the nursery to change him and there were no diapers, clothes, wipes etc... We decided to paint the downstairs first, and then slowly move the furniture up/down, leaving the crib for last. Hopefully by this time he will get out of this habit of waking up at 2:30 or 3 in the morning.

Oh....how could I forget! He got his two upper teeth the week we went to California for the National Championship! Those were miserable. The lower teeth were so easy...but I wouldn't wish cutting the upper ones on anybody.

I was terrified about the plane ride to LA, but he was awesome! The first flight to Chicago he slept from take off to descent. From Chicago to LA he was awake half of the time and asleep half. He was pretty silly and loud on the flight, but no screaming and crying. The return flights went pretty much the same way.

We have been trying to get everything from Christmas packed up and keeping our den from being consumed by toys (hopefully moving him downstairs will help hugely). We also decided to build a room around our laundry closet to make it a laundry room. Last weekend David framed it up and started sheet rocking, and this weekend we are going to try to finish it. It should be a huge help with keeping things organized and clean. I've also finally picked out a tile backsplash for the kitchen. It is a really pretty tumbled marble small subway tile. Once we get it in we want to paint the kitchen (finally!) and install the tile. Too many projects, so little time.