Catching Up: Clare at 8 Months

I figured I'd update you all on Clare since, really, that's why you all read this page, right? I do have pictures to add to Picasa but that's still a couple of days away yet. Here's a little snapshot of what's going on with her now that she's 8 months old:

• She's been almost singularly focused on physical development in this last month and is moving around a lot more
• Though not yet crawling really (I think that Clare thinks crawling is for suckers), she pretty comfortably drags herself around on her tummy with her arms and sometimes gets in some pushing with her knees
• She can go from sitting to crawling but not back. She can pull herself to standing using the couch or low chairs (she's still kinda short). Most of the time she tries to sit back down after standing the result is a bit of a bump or bonk. Regardless of whether or not it hurt, the surprise is enough to get her crying. We've been working on cheering her every time she lands on her bum from standing as a way of preventing the tears.
  
• She can stand unassisted for maybe 3 or so seconds at a time.
  
• Clare walks very easily while holding on to the fingers of any adult she can convince to take her. Now that she's walking so comfortably, she's hardly sitting still (sitting is for suckers too). She is a woman on the move!
• Clare has 4 teeth
• Clare has grown very comfortable, almost attached, to her bed. She almost always cuts the bedtime routine short these days. I only get out one or two words of her bedtime song (the last step of the routine) when she starts looking for her bed and tries to get out of my arms to lie down. She immediately snuggles up with Mr. Bun and Binky and that's it. Done. Wild.
• But no, she's not yet sleeping through the night. She eats. A LOT. yes, still.
• Clare's up to about 3 solid meals a day and the food is getting chunkier. She's adept at feeding herself rice pasta and anything else that's soft and about that size. We're still mostly feeding her gluten free grains, veggies, and fruit. We're going to wait until closer to 9 months to introduce proteins. Not sure yet when we'll start dairy and gluten containing grains.
  
• Recently, if she can get away with it, she prefers to play with phones, remote controls, and keyboards.

More pictures and video soon. I just have to clean the house first ;)

Talk to you soon,
B.