January 31: Eight months old

My goodness, I don't know what happened to the month of January. It just disappeared! And now this baby girl is a whole month older. Oh, how I wish I could freeze time right now! I'm not ready for her to get any bigger.

Our sweet baby Isla is HUGE! I'm guessing she weighs around 18.5 pounds right now. That is definitely bigger than Audrey at this age. Actually, we just compared Isla and Audrey's legs last night. It is quite possible that Isla's thighs are bigger than Audrey's thighs are right now. That girl has all of her fat packed into the lower half of her body! I don't even know how she is so chubby, because she is really not a huge eater.

We are working on finger foods. It's funny because she picks up everything and puts it in her mouth...except for food . Somehow she knows the difference between food and non-food items! She is doing pretty good with the pincer grasp, picking things up with her thumb and finger. She will pick up her food, look at it, shake it, smash it...but she won't put it in her mouth. She is getting to the point where she will let us help her get it in her mouth. Once in her mouth, she likes the food and does a good job chewing it before swallowing. It's just going to take a little more practice until she is self-sufficient with this eating stuff!Isla is still not rolling over too much, but she is growing more tolerant of tummy time. No signs of crawling at all. Her standing balance is getting pretty good though. She can hold onto something and stand up for quite a while on her own. I'm thinking she might start walking before she even starts rolling over consistently!

She makes all kinds of sounds; squealing and happy screaming still seem to be her favorites. Lately, I have been hearing lots of "mum" and "mumma" sounds from her. I like to think that she is calling me by name! =)Now that she has figured it out, Isla loves to clap. For the first few days, she would start clapping everytime someone looked at her. Since she caught on to clapping so quickly, we have been working on the sign for "more" at mealtimes. If we do the sign for more, she will start clapping. Sometimes she will clap on her own after each bite. It does seem like she understands what we want her to do and is trying to communicate with us....which is really fun!

She also loves to jump in her jumper. Especially when big sister comes and jumps right beside her!