This has been an interesting month for Rylan. He’s had constant cold like symptoms for the majority of the month, which has thrown him off a bit. It’s left him congested and not wanting to eat as much as he normally would. He’s still been really happy, but had more fussy moments than ever before. I finally took him to the doctor and they said he was totally clear, so I’m attempting to resume our normal life of play dates and gym/church nursery visits (I’m a crazy stickler for not bringing your sick kid around others – my attempt to put out good mommy karma).
One exciting thing that happened this month is that we finally dropped his 3rd nap! Wahoo! I know I shouldn’t be celebrating the end of a nap, but being home for 3 naps each day leaves very little time to get outside and play. I knew it was time when he spent a whole week happily rolling around in his crib instead of sleeping during his normal evening nap time. Dropping naps always involves a little wiggle room, and there have been a few days since that we’ve had to put him down for a quick 30 minute rest, but kiddo seems to be handling it all pretty well.
Like I mentioned before, eating has slowed down a bit with him being congested, but he still loves his solids. I’ve learned that we have to actually stop him at a certain point, or he will get a tummy ache afterwards and his reflux will rear its ugly head. The reflux has been a bit better, but we are still averaging 1-2 outfit changes a day – I hope he grows out of this soon! We just recently found this great little feeder by Kidsme that Rylan just loves! And it’s way neater and easier to clean than its mesh counterparts. Although we haven’t introduced many new foods this month, Rylan did get his first taste of avocado, and I wish I had taken a picture of his reaction — pure disgust! He wasn’t giving that one a second chance.
We had a lot of excitement(?) going on with the hurricane last week, so even though we were cooped up in the apartment for days on end, Rylan and Brandon were thoroughly entertained. Brad’s brother stayed with us the whole week since he was in an area of town that was without power, so between Daddy and Uncle the boys were set for playmates. I think having all the people in the apartment inspired Rylan to get more vocal, as he has now started to babble, and even murmured his first little “da-da-da” at dinner the other night. Halloween also went on as planned and Rylan was one cute little football (Brandon was a football player). All month we’ve thought Rylan was just on the brink of crawling, but he still seems content to army crawl wherever he wants to go. At least my floors are getting mopped!
Here’s a typical day for Rylan at 8 months:
- 7:30 am – wake-up, get dressed and bottle (8 oz with 1 T rice cereal)
- 7:45 – breakfast w/ Brandon (will eat from little feeder)
- 8:15 – Outside!
- 9:30-11 – nap #1
- 11 – “play” with Brandon
- 11:30 – Independent Play (blanket time while mom preps lunch)
- 11:45 – bottle
- 12 – lunch (Solids – we introduce new foods at this time, so not to mess with bedtime if he has an adverse reaction)
- 1:30-3:30/4 – nap #2
- 4 – bottle
- 4:15-5 – “play” with Brandon or Outside
- 5 – independent play in play pen
- 5:30 – independent play in walker/exersaucer or play mat
- 6 – dinner with family (Solids)
- 6:40 – bath
- 7 – bottle (8 oz with 1 T rice cereal)
- 7:30 – bedtime!
These are great pictures of Rylan. He has grown so much and we can hardly wait to see both of them.
For some reason I cannot print the receipes…. any suggestions… they are telling me to go back to site administrator???
Thanks , and see you soon
Love Terri xx
Hi Terri – We are excited to see y’all as well! I can’t quite figure out why it’s not printing for some recipes, but I can get it to work for all of them if you actually click into the post itself (so click on the title of the post, then it will bring you to a different page with just that post). From there the print will work. Sorry for any trouble!
So I’m totally back tracking on here so I can compare your schedule with Rylan at 8 months to Marshall now at 8 months. How do you get him to sleep for so long for those naps? I’m lucky if even one of his is a full hour. We are sort of dropping nap 3, but not totally there. It usually ends up being a stroller or hold him in my arms 30 min type of nap if it happens…
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You may not love my answer, but we sleep trained him for naps as well as night time sleep. We had done it with my older son and it worked so well I knew we had to do it for Rylan too. The first 2 would be for at least an hour, with an optional 30 minutes. Meaning, he would have to be in his crib for one hour, but if he was still sleeping, we would let him sleep for an hour and a half total. The last nap was always shorter and we didn’t give that extra optional time so that he would go down at night fine. It sounds like you will be done with the 3rd nap soon, so I wouldn’t totally worry about where he takes it or how long it is now. When he switches to 2 I would highly recommend doing a bit of sleep of training because he will be taking that afternoon nap for years to come and it’s good to get him in the routine now. I’ve found that sleep training for naps can take longer than for night time sleep, but it really does work. I think it took about a week for Rylan where he would cry for at least some part of his nap before falling asleep. And also, when he switched to 2 naps, the afternoon one was 2 hours come heck or high water. I knew he needed to make it to at least 3:30 or else he would be a mess by bedtime (and we actually ended up putting him down early for a week when we first switched as well). Hope that helps, but email me if you want more info.