Jackson is 8 months old! He’s over half a year old and now every day he creeps closer to that scary birthday when he will have been on this planet a whole year!

I don’t think I’ve done a month update before which is a shame – after an incredibly detailed pregnancy I have really slacked on updating my blog about his baby days, but honestly when is there time?! I seriously admire people who blog with a new baby, or maybe their babies are different to mine and sleep in their cots, or some days sleep at all! This said I think I have kept notes of all his major milestones so hopefully I won’t live to regret not keeping detailed notes – after all, what would I record and what wouldn’t I? He is changing and developing so rapidly!

So at 8 months I have a baby (toddler?!) who prefers to be on his feet, who is starting to walk around the furniture, who can sit, crawl, pull himself up, feed himself and clap, but cannot for the life of him sleep in his own cot (but that’s ok, I can’t have everything!)

He seems to be developing quickly, a few days after rolling over he was up on all fours. It took him a while to get the crawling down, he started off commando crawling on his tummy but can now crawl properly, but a day after learning to do that he was pulling himself up. He doesn’t seem satisfied with what he can do, he always wants to do something more. I’m still convinced that it is all driven by the fact that he wants to reach, grab and get to more things to put in his mouth!

This is all great, he is by far the most advanced out of the babies his age I know, but I am not bragging- everyone says he’s clever and he is, but what I wouldn’t give to put him down and be able to walk way and find him there when I got back! What I wouldn’t give to not be shopping for stair gates (he can climb the bottom step and I haven’t left him to experiment any further!) I know that from now to when he goes to school (or maybe uni) I have my hands full keeping him out of mischief. He is a full time job, I cannot leave him loose for a second because he will have pulled himself up on the sofa and probably fallen back and smacked his head on the floor (he has done this a few times when I have been watching, and you think it’s scary them falling back from sitting….!)

We started weaning at 6 months so he’s been weaning for 2 months. In some ways it feels like a lifetime! I started with baby led weaning, but he just freaked out when the food got to the back of his throat, so I tried him with baby porridge. This seemed to slowly introduce him to the idea of swallowing solids and now he will happily chomp through a bread stick (though I’m sure more ends up on the floor than in his tummy!) he just needed a gentle introduction. He is fussy about what he will eat from a spoon, preferring fruit purees to savoury foods, but he will give anything a go if he can pick it up. Although feeding is going well, he hates water! I started him with a baby cup, but he couldn’t get anything out, I tried a different one and it came out too fast and he got soaked. I tried him with a beaker and he acted like he was drowning when I tipped it up (going so far as to grab onto me, hold his breath and cough) and so I got him a bottle, being exclusively breastfed this was new for him and he still won’t get the hang of it. I’m pretty sure he thinks water is an accidental side effect of him chewing on the bottle. Hopefully he will get there, I will have to persevere with that one!

We have started swimming with Water Babies, and knowing how he is with drinking water I was expecting the worst, but he wasn’t that bad. He clung to me like a baby monkey to start with but slowly grew in confidence, he even goes underwater and doesn’t scream!

My baby boy is growing up scarily fast, he is totally unrecognisable from the baby I brought home from hospital in both looks and abilities!! I feel like if I’d blinked I would have missed everything that has happened, and that’s terrfying!