What a week!

8 months, 1 week

I'm so sorry I missed Brock's 8 month birthday post and no post last week! It was absolutely a crazy week!

First let's start with the exciting news! Brock is saying MAMA!!!!!!!!!!!! He has randomly said a few times in the past, but he says it now, all the time! The first time he started saying it, he would just say it over and over again. In one weekend, he went from saying mostly just the 'da' syllable, to saying 'ma', 'na' and 'ba'! It was pretty eventful! When he started saying 'da da', it was clear he had no idea what it meant. But now that he's saying 'mama', he seems to know what he's saying. Sometimes he says it just to talk, but other times, if I walk out of the room or someone else is holding him and he wants me, he'll start saying 'mama'. It's so sweet!!

We are also almost convinced that he can say 'dog'. Now obviously, it doesn't sound like 'dog', more just like 'dah', but he says it a lot of times when he's looking at Oscar or a picture of a dog. It could totally be a coincidence, but we think he's a baby genius already!

For the not so fun stuff, last Tuesday, Brock came down with a pretty high fever. We were out for Drew's birthday and he was just tired and mopey and only wanted me to hold him. He felt like he was on fire! We got him and his temp was over 102 so we called the nurse line. They said it didn't seem like anything to be too worried about, probably just his body fighting an infection. The next morning he woke up with no fever (probably thanks to Baby Motrin) and seemed fine. Until about mid-morning when I got a text from Cynthia that his fever was back. I immediately made a doctor's appointment for that afternoon. After checking him from head to toe, all they could see was a little redness in his ears, so they gave him some antibiotics for it.

He had to stay home from daycare on Thursday and he was fine most of the day. His eyes still looked tired, but was acting fine, no fever. Until that night when his fever shot up again to almost 104. Again, I called the nurse line and they said not to worry. That it was just his body fighting the infection. I felt terrible. He just wanted to be held, so I just held and snuggled him all night, and stayed home with him Friday. By Saturday, the fever seemed to have gone away, however, a rash broke out all over his little tummy! It didn't seem to itch and it didn't really spread and so after another call to the nurse line, where they said it was probably just his ecsema or dry skin, we tried to let it go. He was getting a little too used to being just with mommy/daddy all day. He started throwing little tantrums when we would leave the room or take something away from him. Last night, we couldn't WAIT for bedtime and needless to say, we were happy to get back into our routine today!

Now, for his 8 month stats:
- Eating 4, 6 oz bottles a day
- Eats breakfast, lunch and dinner (cereal and fruit, cereal and veggie and veggie/fruit)
- We've started letting him try other foods - cheese, crackers, breads, etc and he's started learning to chew!
- Still no crawling but looks like he's trying to get there
- Saying 'mama', 'dada', 'ba', 'na', 'da'
- Feeds himself his bottle
- Talks a LOT - and sometimes just yells to hear himself!