Eight Months Old: Family Time

RICHLAND, WASH. -- Living on the west coast has major perks... the biggest being our close proximity to family. The Candrian hub in Salt Lake is just an hour plane flight from the Tri Cities. An HOUR! AH! And Isaac's family hub is just a few hours drive away in Portland. So we've been taking full advantage of it. Needless to say, it's been a busy month!  We spent a few days in Utah earlier this month hanging out with my family. Marin got to spend time with several of her Candrian cousins and enjoyed being showered with attention. 

I love that she has so many cousins her own age. She loves it too, she just had a hard time showing it at this moment. 

Poor thing didn't feel too hot the first day we were there.

The day we got back from Utah we left for Isaac's family reunion in McCall, Idaho. Oh, I love family. It's really been a blissful few weeks. And I think its safe to say Marin was enjoying herself too. She's such a friendly little thing and liked to wave to everyone she saw. She's such a ham. We spent the week at the most gorgeous lake that Isaac grew up going to with his family. Marin had a great time playing in the sand and learning not to eat it. She also went on her first boat ride. 

We had to drive several hours away to get to Isaac's family reunion. So that meant lots of stops to keep her happy.

Going for a walk in Ponderosa State Park, near where we stayed. We saw a bunch of deer. 

Marin took her first boat ride on Payette Lake.

She loved playing on the beach as long as big waves weren't crashing on her.

Hanging out on the beach with her cousins. Such cute kids! Plus, another cousin her age! Blissful!

Eight Month Stats:

• 22ish lbs. 

Eating:

• The latest tricks up her sleeve are drinking from straws. She still devours mashed potatoes and gravy like they're going out of style. 

Sleeping:

• Urgh. Let's not talk about it. 

Wearing:

• Most of her summer clothes were six month sized. Since they're mostly all shorts and rompers she is still wearing them. But all of her six month leggings have turned into cropped pants. This girl is tall! 

Tricks and New Skills:

• Cruizing: Marin loves to pull herself up on anything and everything and walk around holding on to things. She's even started to stand all by herself for a few seconds at a time. Holy moly! 
• She still gets around best by crawling and has developed quite the speedy crawl.
• Her personality is really shinning through these days. She's a definite people-person. She likes to wave to everyone she sees. Her wave basically consists of sticking her arm straight out (kinda like "Hey, what's up guys!"). The wave has no hand action, it's all arm. 
• She's also starting to point to things, which is pretty cute. 
• She also loves to clap and give high fives. She'll even grab our hands and make them clap together. 
• The last few days she's started to turn the pages in the books we read. It's really darling. As soon as I start lifting the page to turn it, she'll grab it and turn it the rest of the way, meanwhile cranking her head to eagerly see what's on the next page. 
• One of the funniest things she's started doing since we moved here involves bath time. The bath tubs in our apartment don't have a drain lever on the medal plate below the spout, so it's just a plain round medal, shiny plate, which shows reflections pretty good. She was pretty confused/amused the first time she noticed our reflection in it. She'd get up really close to it and try to look inside to see what we were doing in there. It was pretty funny. It's not quite as amusing to her anymore, but she still gets really close to it and looks in it to see herself (and us) every time she has a bath. 
• She still gets entertainment out of staring in a mirror. Every time we enter or leave a bathroom we stop so she can giggle and smile at herself. Oh, I love her.
• The kid has four teeth. Sharp ones. Two on top, two on bottom. I know she's getting more because if she has nothing to suck on, then her fingers are always in her mouth.