8 months already

JT hit his 8th month of outer-utero living on Thanksgiving Day. He's less baby now and more little boy. In the eating world he is still mostly a boob man. We've gotten better at getting him fed the Gerber stuff on a pretty consistent basis. I graduated him to the stage 2 foods. I thought that meant a little more chunkier substance but it's just one more ounce of it. He loves the food straight out of the cupboard but like his mom, he scrunches up his face when he gets leftovers out of the fridge. We've given him bits of cracker a few times while we've been out to satisfy his "part of the eating experience" and that hasn't gone to well. He gets it to the back of his throat and then tries to swallow it whole. In return we're treated to gagging and excessive drool (and giggles from me). The next step was the puff food and this stuff is a bit of a challenge, too. We thought it'd be a piece of cake since it dissolves but no, straight to the back of the throat it goes. I'm not giving up so we break those little pieces into smaller pieces and feed it to him that way. He does better and when I'm needing to entertain him at the table I give him a bunch of pieces at once. On average, 1 makes it to his mouth and the rest end up glued to his palms, forearms and his lap. Sign language is still his favorite form of communication. He won't move while the dvd plays and he learns his words. We're still on the first disc, we know all the signs and we use signs regularly for the words eat, water and no. Speaking of no. He's turned into a clingy, screaming muffin if things don't go his way and really lets out a scream when you sign no, say no and shake your head no at the same time. Spending a week with relatives didn't help the situation and we're left with the mess of getting him used to not being picked up at every whimper. No official first words yet. He does say what sounds like 'mom' when he's crying and a few dada's have escaped his little lips. Within the last week he's started saying, "hmm?" and waits for us to Hmm back to him in the same tone. It usually lasts about 6 hmms. In more mouth news, the 5th tooth is in and the 6th is working it's way through. The military crawl has been replaced with the slow crawl. He's got it down but he only does it until he reaches something to pull himself up on. He's become proficient at falling away from the table edges after several chin bonks. Then again there was the bloody mouth incident the day before we left for vacation. He was trying to scoot forward and sit himself up but slipped in his jammies on the wood floor. He tumbled head first and I thought it was just going to be another little bruise on the head but he ended up with bloody drool. I admit, I panicked a little bit and yelled to Kevin, "we've got blood!" in as calm a voice as possible while still conveying some urgency. After pacing the hallway for a few minutes and getting him calmed down and an icy teething ring I surveyed the damage. His upper tooth disappeared and I thought for sure it got knocked back into his gums but it was just the gums had swollen over it. After about 30 minutes his tooth was back and he was busy bonking into things again. He's just toughing up.