Ollie; Eight Months

Ollie turned eight months old last week. I didn’t get around to writing a seven months update, and a lot has changed in the last two months!

His current stats:

Weight: 8.6kg

Height: ? (I really should try to measure him!)

Ollie’s weight is now in the 50th percentile! He’s come a long way from that tiny 2.7kg baby we brought home. He certainly feels much heavier - my back is killing me from carrying him around! He is eating more solids and isn’t crawling yet, so he just packs on the weight. His thighs are soooo chunky and squishable!

Sleeping

Since coming back from sleep school Ollie is like a model sleeper. I have a much longer post on the details of sleep school which I’ll publish soon. But in a nutshell, Ollie has a two hour nap in the morning, a two hour nap in the afternoon, and a 45 minute catnap in the evening before dinner. He goes to bed anywhere from 7-8pm and sleeps through the night nearly every night, waking anytime between 6:30-7:30am. The few times he has woken up he either self-settles or we go in and pat him back to sleep. The only tricky night we had was when he cut his top two teeth. Putting him down to nap or to sleep is a piece of cake. A book and two rounds of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" allow him to wind down and are signals that it is time to sleep. Then we pop him in his sleeping bag, give him a kiss, say "It's time to sleep. Goodnight. I love you" and walk out of the room. Easy peasy! It is amazing the difference sleep school has made. 

Ella also goes to bed between 7:30-8pm and wakes about the same time as Ollie. She generally sleeps through as well. Andy and I have our evenings back and everyone is much, much happier now that everyone is sleeping through the night!

Feeding

At 8 months old, Ollie has five milk feeds per day, which follow this pattern:

Morning wake up - breastfeed

After morning nap - bottle of formula or breastfeed

After afternoon nap - bottle of formula

Before bed - breastfeed

10:30pm - breastfeed (dreamfeed - done while he is asleep)

It took us a while to get him to take formula. He WAS NOT happy the first time I gave him that instead of breastmilk in a bottle. In fact he started refusing the bottle, which was frustrating. We had to reintroduce the bottle with breastmilk, which took a few weeks of offering it everyday at the same time. Once he was happily taking that again we started to mix in a little bit of formula with the breastmilk. Every few days we increased the amount of formula until he took a whole bottle of it.The whole process probably took a month. 

I’m not in a huge rush to stop breastfeeding completely so for the next month or two we’ll continue to mix feed. I think it will be helpful to still be breastfeeding when we move back to Canada as it is easier than formula to deal with on the plane, plus helps with ear pain during take off and landing. 

Over the past week Ollie has really picked up on eating solids, and now eats three meals a day, plus usually a snack in the afternoon. He loves finger foods that he can feed himself. For a while he wanted nothing to do with a spoon, but now is happy to go back and forth between being spoon fed and feeding himself. Some of his favourite foods are: sweet potato, broccoli, pasta, pear, strawberries, grapes (any fruit really), peanut butter and toast and avocado. These Baby Mum-Mum rice rusks are also a huge hit and a handy on-the-go snack.

(EDIT: We ended up dropping the dreamfeed a few days after Ollie turned 8 months. At sleep school they told me to drop it once he was consistently eating three meals a day. I was super nervous that we would mess up his sleeping, but Ollie adjusted like a champ with no disruption to his sleeping at all. Win!)

Development and Play

Ollie’s favourite thing at the moment? Ella. He gives her the biggest smile when he sees her in the morning and he watches her all the time. It’s great when she finds something that makes him laugh. Ella will do the same thing over and over without getting tired of it and Ollie thinks it is hilarious each time - like when she blows bubbles in the bath or makes funny faces at him.

Over the past two months Ollie has perfected the art of sitting up. He’s much happier like this than on his back now. 

Peekaboo is a huge hit with Ollie at the moment. He likes it if you cover your face but what gets a big reaction from him is if you hide and pop out from behind a wall. 

Songs with actions are also going down well. Itsy bitsy spider, Ram Sam Sam, Open Shut Them are some of our favourites.

Ollie is desperate to get moving. If he is up on all fours he rocks back and forth a little before face planting. He is getting stronger every day though. I hope he holds off on crawling until we get to the beach house at the start of February. We have three floors in our current house and I don’t want to have to put the baby gates back up!

Ollie cut two more teeth this month, the top two. So four teeth are through in total now, the top and bottom two. He seems to get them in pairs! Cutting them is usually accompanied by a very runny nose and a pretty unhappy baby. Nothing a bit of Panadol and some cuddles can’t fix!

We read a few books before bed every night now. We have about 10 of the That’s not my… series, and Ollie really likes them as they have a touch and feel aspect. Where is the Green Sheep? Is also a favourite and a book pretty much every Aussie child has.

Ollie still really likes going for a walk in his pram although we tend to limit this. At sleep school they advised us that during his awake time he should be getting in as much “active play” as possible. Active play is him down on the ground, not being carried around or chilling in the pram. Still, it is nice to get out for a walk and we usually have at least one a day. Sometimes it's a half hour power walk so I can get some exercise, other times we stroll to the park and chill under a tree in the shade - it really depends on how hot it is outside.

Here are few photos from this month, in reverse chronological order:

Sitting with my big sister!

Photobomb!

Taken by photographer Ella

Still practicing tummy time

Learning to sit up

Mmmmm omelette

Watching a load of washing. Fascinating!