Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails

I must admit I was scared to have a baby boy. I'd already had a girl and thought I would understand a girl better than a boy. But I stand corrected. I adore my baby boy! He is worlds apart from his sister and he amazes me every day. The strangest thing about having two kids is how much you expect them to be alike and then how surprising it is when they are so very different.

Aidan is 8 months old this month. He is so very active. He has been able to roll across the floor for a couple of months, and he gets closer to crawling every day. He gets around just fine with his little army crawl on his belly, although he loses some momentum once he gets off the rug and onto the hard, smooth floor. He's like a race car spinning its wheels on slick pavement: just not enough traction. He loves to play with toys that make noise, the louder the better!

Aidan loves to eat. He loves cheerios (a baby requirement, no?). When I put him in his high chair and start to get them down, he starts waving his hands and feet in excitement. He eats his vegetables with an enthusiasm equivalent to when he eats bread and fruits. The only thing he hasn't been too thrilled about is the hard boiled egg yolk I mixed into his homemade rice cereal. It is a point of pride with me that I've never fed my babies baby food from a jar, except when we're traveling. I believe it is one more thing companies have convinced us we must have for our babies, when in fact we've been feeding them from our own plates for many hundreds of years longer than Gerber has been around. (Of course, I say this, but I sure do love my jogging stroller/bike trailer.)

I don't think Aidan's breastmilk intake has decreased much despite all the food he eats. He drinks it expressed from a bottle at daycare, and from the source the rest of the time. He looks up into my eyes when he's nursing, and I just love that time with him. I've recently started reprimanding him (verbally when I yell "OW!") for biting. His first tooth just came in, so it won't be long and the biting will soon be REALLY painful.

On the sleeping front, Aidan has been awesome! Teagan was hard to get to sleep from the very beginning, and even now she's the one to wake me up in the middle of the night rather than him. I am still so surprised that I can lay him down in his crib when he is wide awake and he will fall asleep without even crying once. I like to hear him talking and playing while he gets sleepy.

Last night I discovered he won't sleep in his crib without his blanket. It was in the dryer so I'd used a different blanket, but he just kept crying and crying even after both Rich and I went in separately to rock him for awhile. He still was fussing. He also has a little teddy bear/blanket for holding onto, which he likes to mash his face into, but this wasn't helping last night. So I got his big blanket from the dryer, went in, and covered him up. He immediately stopped crying, snuggled up under his blanket, sort of patted it with his chubby little hands, and then rolled over and went to sleep. I guess we're bringing it with us on our trip tonight!

Aidan is just such a happy baby. His laughs are infectious. I'm so glad we have him in our lives now!