Ellen is 8 months old today! Only one month left of her belonging more to my body than to the world. I’m going to do my best to savor this upcoming month a little extra, while she’s still so near to her first “home”.

To celebrate turning 8 months old, Ellen slept the whole night last night. A full night of sleep + a nap yesterday afternoon has got me feeling like the world is a brand new place today. Side note – it is also sunny and 70 degrees for literally the first time since last fall, so that helps, too!

Little Ellen isn’t packing on the pounds rapidly anymore, so we’re still enjoying the same clothes. It’s a bit silly how much that matters to me, but I had a disproportionate amount of guilt for how little we used previous sizes, so even though I’ve mentioned this before, it still feels newsworthy that we’re getting good use out of this batch.

We still don’t have any signs of teeth, which is both a blessing and a curse. If she is as grumpy about teething as Lewis was, I’m not looking forward to it at all. But as I mentioned in my last post, she isn’t loving purees, so some teeth would come in handy!! She is getting much, much better at getting little chunks of food into her mouth on her own, and she does her best without teeth to gum down the little bits of vegetables, cheese, beans, bread, etc., but she frequently gags on the bigger chunks that she isn’t successful at breaking down, and it is the most wretched noise!

Ellen’s latest tricks include high-fives and clapping. Because she’s so good at those tricks, we’re now trying to encourage her to wave. I bet you she gets it within the next week or so. She’s clearly observing us doing it and you can almost see the gears turning as she watches.

She is also a certified professional at rolling from her front to her back. She cannot be convinced to stay on her tummy for even one second, because she is so proud of her ability to roll to her back. If you put her on her tummy, she immediately rolls over and then starts giggling and grinning and kicking with unbridled joy. I’m convinced she could roll back the other way just as easily, but she just doesn’t seem to want to.

I’m only slightly concerned that her newfound interest in staying on her back will delay crawling. On the one hand, I want her to keep progressing and hitting milestones. On the other hand, mobile babies are a handful, so she can go ahead and take her sweet time!

Those are the major highlights for Ellen this month. I suspect this upcoming month will be chock-full of big news, like crawling, standing/cruising, waving, and maybe a first word. Like I said, I’m going to do my best to soak it all up!