8 Month Letter

Dear Devon -

Happy 8th month of life, my peanut! It’s like a switch got flipped this month. You are much more interactive, have a consistent schedule, are sleeping really well and generally make being your mama easy and a lot of fun.The big change in our house this month is that you went from Squid-o to Crawl-o. Yup, you are a rocket man. You started crawling at 8am on Wednesday, August 11th. It was kind of amazing because up until that point you were very much NOT able to do it and suddenly it clicked and off you went. Especially when we put things like pens and cell phones and glass objects just out of reach. You got to them no problem.



You know what is more fun than crawling though? Pulling up to look around. You haven’t quite figured out how to get to your feet but you are quite adept at navigating with your knees. It’s a load of fun to walk around the house with Dad supporting you under your arms as well. I’m not sure if we’re doing a good thing by teaching you this skill or will regret it when you are walking solo by 8 ½ months.In light of this new found mobility (and unsteadiness) we have temporarily moved the sharp coffee table to the condo to give you more room in the living room. And of course moved a lot of breakable, sharp or electric things 3 feet up off the floor. And whatever we’ve missed you’ll let us know, I’m sure.One of your current pastimes is to find a shelf of things and pull everything out. Of course all babies love to do this, so you are right on track. Books make a good mess as does the Tupperware cabinet.

However the glass and ceramic bowl cabinet does not. So this weekend your dad will be spending a good deal of time in the basement finishing up those cabinet doors. Yes. He will.Last month we took you to have some ‘professional’ portraits done. Why? I had a coupon so we thought we’d give it a whirl. While I love the idea of having a nice family picture, we won’t be doing it at JCPenny’s again. I think we can do so much better either ourselves or with someone we know helping us out. It was tough to get you to smile in the really bright setting and the 18 year old chirping ‘ah-BOOBOOBOOBOO, SQUEEEEEKY’ in your face... And it’s not like you don’t like to smile. Case in point:

The highlight of this month was the weekend of the 22nd when we had your Blessing. Instead of a traditional baptism in one religion we have decided to raise you with influences from many faiths to be the moral, ethical and caring person we know you will be. You can then choose as you get older what path feels right to you. However we still felt it was important to have a ceremony where we could welcome you to the family and celebrate your arrival with them. Working from a number of ideas and our own hearts we came up with a lovely ceremony that Benjamin’s mom performed for us. It was exactly what we were hoping for. The day itself was fantastic, the company was wonderful and we truly felt blessed to have the opportunity to welcome you into our lives and our hearts in front of our families. Thank you to everyone who made this day so special and memorable for us.

This month was really a joy for us. The weather was hot but nice to be outside in, we got to hang out with our neighbors at the Corn Feed, we played a lot with our best buddies Jody and Benji,

had our first trip to a beach (EAT THE BEACH) with Erin and Nana, a visit to an art fair (OOOO GRASS) and had a bunch of your buddies over for brunch on the patio. We are so glad you love people and don’t mind visiting with a variety of folks. Keep it up.

Of course it’s not always bliss. And to illustrate we have a nice collection of embarrassing photos of when you are just generally mad. Such as this:

This next month we are looking forward to more visit by friends and family and getting ready for our first big vacation – Knoxville and Atlanta in early October. We’ll start telling you how awesome air travel is very soon in hopes you agree by October 8th.

We’ll be spending Labor Day weekend relaxing at home and probably going through your clothing and finding some newer, bigger items since you are growing like a weed.

Love,
Mama