A letter to Luke at 8 months.

Dear Lucas,

You're 8 months old! And what a fun age eight months is turning out to be! You are increasingly more of a person now with a personality and a sense of humor and very specific preferences. We love how you are so playful! You find every single thing you come in contact with fascinating. Tonight as I held you at the meeting you reminded me of a Tasmanian Devil - twisting and turning to get at objects that were out of reach or to grin at people behind us. Seeing your excitement about everyday things makes daddy and I see it all with new eyes.

You have 2 teeth now. Right on the bottom in the center. You handled these new mouth invaders really well. About 2 weeks before they popped up you were a little fussy and you got a slight fever and then in the week after they were out you were a little fussy. I think you just had to adjust to sharp objects in a formerly soft place.

You wave goodbye now whenever anyone walks out the door! It's amazing! As soon as someone waves at you your little arm comes up and you flap it back at them. It blows me away that you're old enough to do that.

Your starting to pull yourself up using chairs or any other stationary object. Of course in the tub you've been cruising for a while. Since the water makes you buoyant you walk all around the outside of the tub holding onto the sides, but it's just been in the last week that you've really been attempting it on dry land.

You've starting to remind me of a baby koala whenever we're in a situation that you're unsure about. You will cling to me so hard if I try to put you down and if I do manage to get you down you'll cry as if I've broken your heart. That means that you and I are spending a lot of time attached to each other. I'm getting very adept at doing everything one-handed.

You are a very large baby. The last time we weighed and measured you was a month and a half ago and you were almost 21 pounds and 28 inches long. Since then you've grown out of all of your 9 month clothes and you've moved onto a 12 month size. Remember how I said you've gotten clingy lately? Wanting to be held all the time? Thanks to you sweet boy I now have shoulders that would make a linebacker jealous. You think Iron Man is tough? HAH. He's got nothing on your mama with SHOULDERS OF STEEL.

You remind us more and more of a little boy and not just a baby. We're seeing glimpses of the toddler you will soon be. You love to roughhouse and to play Chase the Baby. (Although you don't really understand the concept of a game of chase yet. Most of the time when I come after you you grin with delight and head straight into my arms. Then you cover me with kisses. You ARE very good at chasing me, but if I crawl away you cry because all you want is to get to me so I'll hold you tight. I wish our games of chase would be like this forever, but I know that soon you'll be big enough to run in the opposite direction.) You love to follow the vacuum cleaner all around our little house and when it gets close enough to touch you try to lick it as if that will help you to figure out how it gets it's Amazing Powers. You love the kitchen because that's where all the fun doors and drawers that slam are. You pull them open and shut, open and shut just because you can.

We love watching you eat. You have started to get preferences with food. Most nights I give you veggies cooked in chicken broth and some butter until they're very soft. You love them. Actually the veggies are so yummy that daddy and I love them too and sometime we steal some off your tray, but you think it's funny so that's okay. You love fresh juices even if I mix greens like kale or beet tops into them. You also will eat liver!  I'm glad because I have to choke it down, but you seem to relish it.

You're sleeping beautifully now. Eight hours a night without waking, then you eat and go back down for four more. To get you to do this I very slowly weaned you from your feedings at night by feeding you for a minute and a half less in each feeding every night. Since it was gradual you didn't seem to realize it was happening until one night instead of eating when you woke up I just patted you each time you woke. Then each night after that I would sooth you less and less so that you would learn to sooth yourself. It took about 2 weeks total, but it was so worth it. Now that I 'm getting more sleep I'm starting to feel like a functioning human again.

Sitting up so straight in your stroller.

You love the outdoors. If you ever get bored or upset all we have to do is step outside and you are instantly happy. When we take walks you sit up as straight as you can in your stroller so you can see as much as you can. You like to lay in the grass, and you like to roll in the grass, and you like to eat the grass. We think you're part cow. Or maybe that you need the fiber so you can cough up a hairball. Perhaps if you didn't lick the vacuum cleaner so much you wouldn't have hairballs that you needed to cough up. Just a thought.


We love to listen to you talk to yourself. You'll babble away to yourself and be completely entertained by it. Oh, and the other day I think you told me a joke! You babbled a long sentence and then you started laughing and laughing. When you stopped to take a breath you looked at me as if to say, "Wasn't that funny mommy?" That look made me laugh which delighted you and made you chuckle more. We were both sitting on the floor just giggling about each others reactions.

We love this age so much that we wish we could pause for a little while right here, but we know that then we would miss out on the next super cool thing you'll do. So I guess you can keep growing little bear.
We love you, all the way to the moon, twice around the earth and back home again,
Mommy and Daddy