Lots of little goings on.

A couple of days ago, I lowered his crib to the lowest possible setting. I asked a community that I spend way too much time lurking at, and it seemed that the 8-month mark was a good one for that. Another guideline that I read said that when baby shows interest (not necessarily ability) in standing, to lower the damn thing. Anyway, thankfully Tristan was happy in his Exersaucer while I spent ten years lowering the crib. Now his dragon crib ruffle bed skirt thingie drags on the floor – no pun intended. Damnit, that was the last piece of the dragon set that was useful.. Anyway, the crib thing is working fine; it’s a lot like putting him in a playpen. Tristan also does not try to pull to standing or even to sitting while in the crib (that we see, anyway) but he does do both in other settings. Mostly, he just tries to crawl or lie on his back and punt his little legs around in his crib when awake.

Tristan’s crawling is getting somewhere. He’s now officially mobile but he is slow enough and not confident enough that he doesn’t get far quickly yet. I know that these are my final few moments before having a flying toddler underfoot that I will have to chase down constantly. He practices standing a lot, too – whenever one of us is holding him in a position to spot for it. He still cannot balance on two feet for more than a second for the most part, although he gets it for a good moment sometimes.

We found that the commercial jar baby food in the 3rd foods range is perfect for Tristan right now. I don’t know if he had a coincidental food strike or was just looking for more challenging foods, but since we started feeding the 3rd foods, he’s been gobbling solids. He also seems to be a somewhat thirsty baby but upon doing some research, what he drinks is close to normal. He doesn’t seem interested in self-feeding solid foods or trying to tackle the yogurt puffs and the like, although he at least recognizes them as food now. I think I will wait a few days before trying those with him again.

I don’t know if this child is gaining a lot of weight suddenly or I’m getting weak in my old age, but it’s getting very hard to wear Tristan for too long. For the most part, it had been getting easier and in some ways it still is, as I can reliably wear him for any occasion where I start by putting him in the sling (and leaving the stroller behind). But my back aches right now and the last two long walks we took in the evening left me very tired at the end. At least it’s exercise and baby likes it.

I took Tristan out to a thrift shop, which turned out to suck. Then we went to the adjacent Walgreens and walked around forever. A lady who may have been a member of the staff based on her outfit noticed Tristan in the carrier and approached him (as people often do). She had several pieces of paper in her hand and she crinkled them. That was the funniest thing that Tristan had ever seen – he giggled wildly. She continued to do this for a few minutes, and Tristan giggled nonstop until he got tired of giggling. I thought the whole scene was funny and I like seeing baby happy, so I also had the giggles. People kept coming over to watch the scene and coo at the baby. People also always comment about what a happy baby he is, just about everywhere we go. I think the secret to happy babiness in our case is: let baby sleep, when baby wakes up feed/diaper, put baby in car with lots of grabby toys, take baby somewhere he hasn’t seen or generally is excited to see and put him in the sling, have strangers coo over him and talk to him like they had never seen a baby before. He really does seem to be a social critter so far.