August 2008

August started out with Peyton saying his first word, which was "bye-bye." He had been waving for about a week, so I think it was natural for him to say "bye-bye" to go along with the motion.

The first weekend in August we took a trip to the Inner Harbor. The weather was really nice. We ate dinner, checked out some stores, and then strolled around the waterside. Peyton even went for his first ride on the merry-go-round. He had a good time on the ride. The funny thing was that he would see me waving to him as he went around, but by the time that he realized that it was me and tried to wave back, the merry-go-round was half-way back around. It was cute though.

Peyton, a.k.a. Mr. Lazy, finally decided to start holding his own bottle on August 3. I think he could have done it much sooner, but just didn't want to. He was probably thinking, "Why should I hold my bottle when someone else will hold it for me?"

August 6 was our 3 year anniversary. We celebrated by eating dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Peyton liked looking at all of the animated animals scattered around the restaurant. He especially liked the monkey which was very close to our table. He wasn't afraid of anything, even though it was dark and very loud.

The next day, Peyton started standing alone. He would let go of the table or whatever else he was holding on to and just stand there. We knew from this point it wasn't going to be long until he started walking.

Peyton came down with the chicken pox in the middle of the month. It sucks that he got them because if he could have made it to his 12 month check-up, he would have gotten the vaccine for it and probably never would have gotten them in his life. But it really wasn't that bad. You can see a few pox on his forehead in the picture below. He never scratched one of them. In fact, it seemed like he didn't even know that he had the chicken pox.

There was no regular 10 month check-up, but when we took Peyton to the doctor for his chicken pox, we found out that he was up to 19 lb. He would eat 5 bottles a day, plus cereal, a fruit, a vegetable, and a dinner baby food. He could also eat more and more regular food. He still liked baby food just fine, unless there was real food around and then he didn't want anything to do with the baby food.

Peyton's favorite activities this month were crawling around the house quickly and being chased. He would squeal with delight whenever we would chase him around. I think he did a thousand laps around the island in our kitchen over the course of the month.

Terps football started at the end of the month. We have season tickets. We wanted to try to take Peyton to a game, but it just never worked out. If the games were at noon, it would be in the middle of his nap and if they were at 6:00 he would be ready for bed by half-time. Once there was a 3:00 game, which would have worked out well with his nap schedule, but of course it rained that day. So Peyton never made it to a game, but he still dressed in his Terps gear to support the team.


Peyton took his first independent step on August 29. He had been cruising along furniture for a while. He also learned how to climb the steps this month. We bought him a push-toy to help him with walking too. Here's a video of his with that toy.