Petra is 8 months old!

At eight months, Petra is such a nice baby. She’s happy and mellow. The teething is hard on her, but not as bad as it was for Silas. Her top two teeth just broke through, and the next ones over are almost in. She is an eating machine, and howls her displeasure if we eat solid food without giving her some.

Petra is almost crawling. She can get up on all fours, but doesn’t know what to do from there and often falls on her face. There’s another baby at church who is just a few months older, and Petra stares as she crawls all over the place. She gets this concentrated look, like she’s trying to crack the code.

She’s interested in other babies. She and Arthur spent a couple of hours the other day just sitting on a quilt in the shade, scooting toward each other and trying to grab each other. They desperately want to connect.

Sleep continues to be pretty good. I had a few nights where we were up every two hours, due to teething, but that was the exception. I felt so awful after that, I can’t imagine how I did that every night for over a year with Silas.

JC has started a new job (more on that another time), so getting her down during the days when I’m home by myself is challenging. I’ve resigned myself to letting her take her morning nap in the carrier on those days–sometimes during a long walk with Silas–and putting her down for her afternoon nap while Silas is having rest time.

It doesn’t count as unsafe sleeping if I’m right there, right? It’s usually better than this (no blankets, no pillows), but this was a weird day. One of my goals for the next month is to move her to a proper floor bed or her sleep tent, at least for naps. For reasons that are hard to explain, this is a serious yak shaving enterprise…

On a related note, I think she might have a lovey. The bunny she is hugging in the picture is a favorite toy for both children lately. Silas has named him “Brian,” making him exactly the second toy Silas has named. I think Petra likes Brian because Silas does. In any case, the agreement is that Silas can play with Brian a bit during wakeful times, but Petra gets to take Brian to bed.

This is the face Petra makes when she sees Silas. You will note she’s clapping, a new skill.

I’m happy to discover that, at least right now, the kids adore each other. Petra is totally enraptured with Silas, and he often asks for her to do things with him. Today, at the playground, he insisted that he wanted to use the swing next to Petra’s, even though that one was a “baby” swing, and he’s starting to use the normal ones. His life dream right now is for us to let them take a bath together, but I haven’t given the green light to that one yet. Silas might love her to pieces, but that’s just what we’re afraid of. He still sometimes hugs her in a way that knocks her over, and only sometimes does this maliciously or for attention. He has no idea that he is still more than double her size. Until he has better awareness of that, I can’t let them bathe together.

Petra gets the giggles sometimes, but she’s mostly a serious baby. Silas was this way, too, and I’m told that I was. Luckily, she is cute even when she’s not smiling.

I was about to say that we didn’t do any traveling this month, but that’s not true! We went to visit Heather and Sam–Petra’s first time in North Carolina. I just somehow didn’t get any pictures of her there. I guess because I was wearing her all the time. Hm. Anyway. So we traveled a bit then, and this coming month, we are going on a trip to Baltimore. I’ll try to un-wear Petra enough to get some pictures of her at the Aquarium (I am at least as excited as Silas about the Baltimore Aquarium. At least.)