8 Months!

Yeah, I know red-eye, but if I waited until I edited the picture you'd never see it, and look how cute he is. (And yes that's a Peruvian flag on the table---the food was fantastic!)

8 Months, holy cow!

Leopleuradon is doing awesome. Healthy and happy. 

Fine Motor: So despite all previous inclinations to do things with his right hand, he now seems to be favoring his left. So who knows, maybe he's a southpaw.  He's nailed the pincer grasp (a month before average). He transfers from hand to hand like a pro and has started to use his hands in concert- holding items in one hand and touching with the index finger of the other. He still very much wants to chew on things, but he has started waving around his index finger at new objects also wanting to touch it.

 

Gross Motor: Crawling is imminent by all guesses (like it has been for months) but no dice yet. Dinobaby appears to be experimenting with all methods of locomotion before mastering any one of them. Hence the picture of the bear crawl. He also loves to stand. To the point that when I try to go sit him down on the floor so I can do something, he'll straight-leg himself, planking from his heels to his neck so that I'll have to stay and help him balance on his feet. He also loves to stand up with his upper body resting on the glider's ottoman so that he can rock back and forth on his feet. He's a goober. 

He also shakes things to make noise and today tried super hard to hit two sticks together, one in each hand. He was marginally successful

Social: Like I said last month, dinobaby also loves to laugh with people. But in the last few weeks he also has a laughing face where he wrinkles his nose and sniffs really fast. It's extremely endearing. He also seems to be overcoming his abject terror at strangers. Still wary, but no crying. It's evolved into alternating between looking out and hiding his face in my shoulder all while have a death grip on my bicep. (Also very endearing)

Language: He has started to babble. He often goes around pseudo biting his bottom lip making a "vvv" and drooling down his chin. He also says "a mam" in a very whiny way when he's frustrated and complaining that we haven't given him the puffs already or sat him up, or let him eat our cellphones, etc. (probably his first word since it's more or less consistent). Other than that, he doesn't actually talk much. 

Cognitive: He has a pretty impressive attention span. I have a box of "supervised" toys that he only plays with when I sit with him. It's a few seashells, a river rock, a house key, a scrap corner of lumber, and some chopsticks. He'll pull all of the items out of the box one by one and explore them for nearly thirty minutes straight. He loves books, and loves to turn the pages. I'm impressed that he knows what to do with them. Although he's a little rough with the paper pages, he's trying to turn them rather than ball them up and eat them like he does with paper outside of books. 

Sleep: I don't want to talk about it. Depending on how you define "sleep through the night" then yes. But if you define it as he goes to sleep and doesn't wake up until he's ready to stay awake for the day then definitely no. However, he's generally out cold between the hours of 11pm and 5am. But his bedtime is 6:30-7, and he wakes up for real at 7am. It's a start.  Naps don't show any signs of spontaneously lengthening. However where in the past dinobaby seemed more or less happy regardless of his 40 minute naps. He is showing signs that they aren't long enough anymore. So, maybe I'll try to do something about that. But man, I really don't want to.