Eight Months...

You are eight months old today, monkey. Is it wrong that I'm already imagining your 1st birthday? Believe me, I'm not wishing the time away or anything like that--every day with you is more amazing than the day before (unless of course, you are being a Grumpy Gus, then I'll take the day before, please). But you are so silly, giggly and happy these days, and so fascinated by everything going on around you, I can only imagine how fun it will be to give you balloons and noise makers and cake.

This month was a bit of a whirlwind. We started the month by getting our first "holiday shrubbery". You were less than impressed. Daddy and I fretted and fussed over balsam and douglass and this one being too high, that one being too scrawny. Nothing like a couple of Jews trying to bridge the cultural gap into secular Xmas. You simply hung out in your bjorn, checking out the scene. No big whoop. And when we got the tree home, and decorated it? Still--no big whoop. Maybe next year?

Daddy & I got to go out on three dates this month--pretty impressive! So you got to spend time with Auntie V, Uncle Jamie and Miss Chloe, Chrisanne & Jason and Grandma Judy & Grandpa Harry. You didn't sleep a whole lot for any of them, but you were happy and you didn't scare anyone away! I love how good you are with others; you are completely content with the world as long as someone's holding you--for the most part. I, on the other hand, find that I spend most of my date time fretting about how you're doing. Mommy is a cliche...

We started hearing more of your voice this month. You are saying "mamamama" and "dadadada", but you have no clue what they mean. I am certain of this because often you will unlatch from nursing, look thoughtfully at my breast and declare, "Dada". We find ourselves so eager to hear you speak and communicate with us. But I also feel a sense of nostalgia for the noises of the past--the freaky teradactyle sound you made as a preemie/newborn; the sneeze-scream from the early days when you freaked yourself out with the sound of your own sneeze. Even the irritating whine you started with last month which seems to have gone the way of the dodo is locked away in my "weren't those cute little noises?" vault for safe keeping. Now, when I hear a new born cry in the grocery store or at the mall, I am amazed at how far you've come. Your cry is now that of a little boy's, not a tiny baby's. It is staggering. When did that happen?

You're still a little munchkin of a thing. At a weight check the other day, you had fallen off the weight chart. But our friend Vergie let us borrow a really good digital scale and we are weighing you obsessively. We're now doing three meals a day of solids and let me tell you, if you could eat yogurt all day, you would. I gave you your first taste of it today and unless there was yogurt IN your mouth, you were not happy. You went through almost an entire cup of it. That is fine with me, little man. I am this far from mixing lard into your food to get you beefed up, so if it's yogurt you want, it's yogurt you'll get. Let's just go into this knowing that you won't be getting a Twinkie in your lunchbox when you're older, okay? The high-sugar and high-fat foods are just for now because if you don't pork up before you start crawling and walking, you're going to waste away to nothing. Can't have that, little man. Eat up!

Speaking of crawling, walking and the like--you are in perpetual motion. I'm not kidding. If you aren't unconscious, you are moving. There's no such thing as sitting still in your world. Peaceful repose is for sissies. Your big thing right now is getting up on your hands and knees and rocking, rocking, rocking. You''ve figured out how to scoot your bottom half forward on your knees, but you don't know how to get your arms moving to actually get forward. End result? Your knees get too close to your hands, totally throw off your center of gravity and you face plant mere centimeters away from where you started. By next month's check in, I'm sure I'll have another half dozen grey hairs from trying to keep up with you. Just this evening, you got up on your knees in the pack and play in the living room and draped your arms over the side...

You went on your first airplane ride this month, too. What a champ. I was a way bigger wimp than you because of my head cold and bursting ears and all. You just nursed and napped and flirted and watched the world below glide by. it was lovely and I hope you remember this for the trip to Honduras next month. This flight was only 1 hour. That one will be almost 6. Daddy had some sort of revelation and booked us first class to Honduras, thinking that would make you more comfortable (because mommy's lap is cushier in 1st class, I guess), so let's try not to irritate the snobby rich folk, okay? Actually, on second thought, feel free to scream it up.

You met a lot of your cousins and many of mommy's friends this month, too. You won't remember them from this meeting, but I really hope you get to spend lots of time with them as you grow up. It was so amazing for me to see the house filled with babies and small children and to actually be a part of it. You give me such a sense of wholeness, little man. Like I am finally who I was alwasy meant to be.

Let's talk a bit about sleep, shall we? I have to tell you, if I could stay at a hotel with you every night, I would. You sleep like, well, a baby in a hotel. We can't figure it out. Five, six hour stretches without waking up. Are you THAT sensitive to how firm or soft a mattress is? Really? Can you think of more area of life to be finicky about? Anyway, you apparently loved our mattress at that hotel and tricked us into thinking you had turned a sleep corner. Ha. Ha. You're pretty funny. No such luck. Why, why, why do you hate sleeping so much?! We are on the edge of having to go through Cry-it-out, even though both of us would rather chew off our own arms than do it. Beleive me, if gnawing off one of our own limbs would help you sleep, it would probably be on the table before CIO. This is how much we don't want to hear you cry; but you know what? You cry anyway. So what can we do? ugh. I promise you and the readers, if and when we do CIO, there will be no posts about it. I can't even bear to think about it. Please sleep, little man!

The evolution of your gestures is endlessly fascinating to me (how's that for an abrupt transition?). Last month you started rubbing your hands on everything to feel it's texture. You'd touch with your fingers and then close your hand on top of the object, running your fingers over it. It looked like, you guessed it, you were waving. Now, you make that same motion in the air--a real wave. Alas, just like calling my boob "dada", though, you have no idea what you're doing. You wave at yourself while you nurse. You wave at the air while you are lying down. I am trying to wave at you a lot and say "hi!" and "bye bye!", so you'll figure out what that motion actually means. Until then, you can just keep waving backwards at me while you're nursing.

I will close this month's check in by describing my two favorite things you do. One is the gigantic open-mouthed slobber kiss. Especially when you are tired, you grab my face by the cheeks, the ears, my hair--whatever is available--and you smash your big wet mouth onto my face. Sometimes you get my mouth, sometimes you get my nose (on more than one occassion I have thought I might drown in your drool). It is the sweetest, most loving thing and while I can't wait for you to give real kisses, I hate that this will stop (although I concede it would look odd and people would stare if you did this when you were 15). The other thing is the laughing when Daddy or I wrestle with you. You LOVE to be thrown around and nuzzled and raspberried. Your little body can't contain the giggle and it comes out sometimes as a real belly laugh and sometimes as a caught breath and then an Ernie laugh (yes, as in Bert & Ernie). I love it. I love you.

Smooches, Mommy