8 months older and wiser too

Anna is 8 months old! Time really does fly! She is absolutely hilarious, and is adding new things to her bag of tricks daily.

Anna sleeps through the night and has for a few months now. Her bedtime routine is pretty typical: eat dinner @ 6, bathtime at 6:30, warm milk and bed 7:00. We still swaddle her with her arms free in a receiving blanket, stick in the plug (binky) and walk out, letting anna fall asleep on her own. She's a pretty good sleeper, but for the past week, she's been waking up for milk at 5:00 instead of her usual morning milk at 6:00. We've tried to push back her bed time, but she just can't handle staying up late - just like her mom.

Hooray for a self entertaining baby! Anna gets really interested in things and examines them from all angles, as seen below. She still puts EVERYTHING into her mouth.

Anna now loves reading books. A few months ago, she wouldn't sit and look at a book for more than 5 seconds! Now we can go through our whole collection (about 20 board books) before she gets bored. She also loves turning the pages and points at some of the more interesting pictures. I love reading her books - but hopefully I wont have random lines from "goodnight moon" floating through my head for the rest of my life.....

telling mom how much she likes books.
hmm, this runaway bunny has the right idea - how can i escape my mom?
lets see here, first he turned into a mountain climber..........
Anna should be a pilates teacher. She does some serious plank moves all day long in an attempt to crawl. Sadly, due to her BMI, I don't think she would have a good turnout at classes (: She is still doing the seal scoot and log roll to get around. This week she started to move her legs in a crawling motion, but alas, she hasn't figured out that you must move your front half in sync with your behind or your face ends up on the floor........we're getting there!! I just love watching her learn new tricks - and dad loves trying to get her to practice.
look at that concentration!!
For a few months, she's been taking regular naps at 8am, 11:30-12:00, and 3 or 4 pm. For some reason the past few weeks, she won't take her late afternoon nap ): which is sad - but nice for getting out of the house! Since learning how to scoot and crawl, Anna has hard time going down for naps, she is too excited to practice her new skills and ends up out of her swaddle - on top of her blankets - and chatting to her imaginary friends out the window (as seen in the picture seen below). Oh well, at least she's happy in there when she's not sleeping!
Feeding anna is probably the best and worst time of day. There has never been a better form of entertainment at our house than watching anna attempt to pick up peas and put them in her mouth. This may be more entertaining than her first attempts at rolling! Her pincer grasp is getting better and she's feeding herself an assortment of foods. The only drawback to this stage is my pathological fear of her choking. I don't know why, but I am sorely afraid of someone around me choking to death - so I cut everything really really small. This morning I scooted her booster seat up to the table and cut up my pancakes for her - so loved being part of our breakfast. And I love having a little pea head at the table (as seen in pictures below). Anna also eats a variety of purees. She likes all sorts of flavors and textures now. I ground up the spaghetti stuffed spaghetti squash we ate for dinner last night and she loved it - probably ate a 1/2 cup of the stuff! What a champ. It's nice to think that soon enough I can retire my milk truck duties. It will be interesting to see is anna loses weight on whole milk when she stops drinking mama's cream