Lily's 8 Month Update

This was a great month for Lily with lots of different developmental milestones going on! She also had a procedure done for her blocked eye duct which seems to have worked really well! Here is everything going on with Lily at 8 months:

Clothing size: 3-6 months and 6 months


Diapers:  size 2

Weight: According to our home scale, 13.4 lbs- come on baby- grow! I'm doing everything in my power to help Lily gain weight!


Sleep: Sleep is still going well. Most days, Lily naps 3 times, sometimes twice. She never falls asleep when we are out anymore and only likes sleeping in her crib or in her pack and play. She sleeps in a heavy sleepsack and almost never uses a pacifier anymore. We maybe offered her one twice in the last month. She started refusing it and prefers to suck on her two fingers for comfort instead.


Solid Foods: Solids was going really well and now, it is going poorly again. Lily is our tricky one and feeding her can be hit or miss. Sometimes, she eats a ton of food like she loves homemade venison hamburgers, mango, pancakes and peas. Other times, she seals her mouth shut and will not let me feed her anything. It's really hard! Eating nutritious foods is SO important to me so we are not giving in and giving her things that she only wants like Cheerios if she isn't eating. I feel like if I start that now, it will never end.

Sometimes, she will eat a whole container of food and other days, she will not even try one bite of anything we are eating. Some days, she likes purees only and some days, she only wants pieces of food. It is hard right now! She "eats" (if she will) three solid meals a day while we eat.

She has had a ton of new foods this month and has liked most of them including: burgers, cantaloupe, pineapple, olives, asparagus, pesto pasta with broccoli (she loved this), Kodiak cakes pancakes, sweet potato fries, pears, homemade applesauce, Spanish rice and beans fed to her by her Abuelita, scrambled eggs (loves), beans, avocado. She likes to grab for some of the food herself but can't really figure out how to get the pieces into her mouth yet.

You bet that I will keep trying to get her to enjoy all the foods! This dietitian mama doesn't want any picky kids!

first trip to Kalahari, eye infection

Breastfeeding: Lily is still breastfeeding 4-5 times per day and gets her 1 pumped bottle at night. No issues. After her 7 PM feeding right before bed, I offer her pumped milk for extra calories but she never takes it.



Eye infection/blocked tear duct:
For about a month and a half, Lily has had an eye infection due to her tear duct being blocked since birth. About 6 times a day, I have had to clean goop from her eyes. She was on 4 different antibiotic drops/ointments/oral. After nothing working, we were referred to an ophthalmologist. We went in for the appointment and they decided to do a procedure right away that day to unblock her eye duct. They stuck a thin metal piece down her tear duct and it took only about 2 minutes.

Afterwards, she had a few blood drops from her eye that night and since then (a week and a half ago), her eye has been almost 100% better! No more goopy yellow discharge. We just finished up her steroid drops that she needed after the procedure and are just watching to make sure that it doesn't come back. If it does, she will need the procedure again one month from when she had the original one. Never a dull medical moment over here with this one!



Milestones/Tidbits:
-After some concern on my part that Lily could not sit up on her own, we worked on it constantly and at 8 months old, she can completely sit up on her own and rarely falls over.

-She finally cares about rolling over and rolls both ways. For the longest time, she was content with just sitting there. She has now become wiggly and loves to move around! When on her belly, she is moving around a bit and I think that in the next month, crawling may be on our horizon. After reading the older kids 8 month update and seeing that they could stand while holding onto the couch, I tried it with Lily and she can do it pretty well also.

-She loves when you kiss her neck and does a funny cough laugh. She loves to blow raspberries. She looks at people and starts to wave her head back and forth and wants you to do it too.


-She loves her siblings and they love to take care of her. Adalyn loves to carry her all around and Oliver loves to hold her. They both love to sing to Lily and must say goodnight to her or else.

-She loves playing with toys and can sit up for a long time while she plays with her toys. She likes going in her exersaucer and playing with the toys on there.


-She is super observant and loves to stare at people. Our house is always crazy with her two older siblings and she loves watching them.

-Still no teeth.

Overall life is really good! I hope to get Lily eating solids more consistently but otherwise a lot of the things that have been worrying us have gotten a lot better.