Nuala,
Eight months. Four months away from your first birthday. Holy cow. Believe it when people tell you how quickly the time flies by when you have children of your own.
It’s hard to keep track of everything that’s happened in the last month. You cut one new tooth on the way down to Mamaw’s for Christmas, so now you’ve got three on the bottom (and no sign of the fourth?), and in the last couple weeks you cut the top two teeth at the same time. The ones on either side of those are just a couple days from busting through as well, so you’ll have a respectable array of chompers here in no time. Based on the way those front two are coming in, I’m thinking you’ve inherited the “Berry gap” that runs so strong in Grandmom’s side of the family. A dimpled, gap-toothed little girl? I had my heart set on curly red hair, but this will be a very close second. I will miss the gummy grins, but I’m looking forward to seeing your little baby face turn into a little kid face. And then I will sob hysterically because you’re growing up so fast.
On the locomotive front, over the past several weeks, you’d gotten really good at scooting backwards and turning in circles. And then all of a sudden, in the last few days, something clicked. Let’s just say that if you ever join the military and need to crawl on your belly under a low-slung web of barbed wire, you will be well-prepared. So now, I turn my head to read an email or write another couple lines of a lecture, look back and voila! You’re across the room already. I get a great deal of joy out of this, but it would be awesome if you would stop heading for the linoleum by the front door and putting your mouth on it. I’m sure it’s nice and salty from our efforts at keeping the front steps de-iced, but really, I mean, gross. In spite of this great leap forward, you’d still rather be up on your feet. If someone’s near you and you’re sitting on the floor, you lean towards them and flap your arms until they give you hands to pull up with. If you’re on your belly, you slither your way up to a lap or legs and look for hands to push up to your knees, then pull yourself to standing. If you find hands, we do laps around the house, pausing at chairs and low tables to cruise along them for a little bit. I fully expect you to one day get the hang of crawling on your hands and knees, and then start walking a week later. And then a week after that, Dad and I will be sitting at the dining room table one morning and you’ll stumble downstairs mumbling about what a rough night you had and is there any coffee?
I’m more astonished at how you’re starting to understand us, and how you’re starting to try to communicate a little bit. You know “baby” and “baby doll,” so that when I ask you where your baby doll is, you look for it. And you know “kiss,” so that you lean in for a kiss when one of us is holding you and asks for a kiss. You know, the really important stuff. Also, I’ve been saying “Uh oh!” when you drop something, and sometimes you do a kind of “Uh oh” back at me. It’s more like “Ah! Ah!” with a surprised look on your face (raised eyebrows and all) but it’s definitely a different sound and expression from your regular babbling. This, too, is really important. It’s how you’ll alert me one day that you’ve removed all your clothes and tried to flush them in the toilet.
By the way, please don’t flush your clothes in the toilet.
Love,
Mom