Calvin at 8 Months

Calvin you are now 8 months old.  You chose this month to do some pretty amazing things.  You are really able to crawl now.  You chase Daisy, your sister and your mom around the house on all fours.  Standing up is your new thing, you love to pull yourself up on anything available.  While you are really good at standing up, you are not very good at getting back down.  You have not yet learned the art of the graceful landing, so currently you either cry for your mom or I to put you on the ground, or you plop down very abruptly, which does not make you very happy.

Speaking of happy, you are happiest when you are with your mom.  She touches your nose and you smile and giggle.  It is really cute.  You are second happiest when you are eating.  Little man, you can really pack away the food.  We call you the bottomless pit.  Your meals generally contain the following, 20 or 30 rice puffs, that you eat while we are getting your meal ready.  A packet of what we lovingly call space food, which is a foil packet containing baby food.  Your current favorite is the salmon, which oddly enough is our least favorite because it smells like salmon.  We then cut up some fruit/vegetables for you, which you scarf down and finally you wash it all down with a couple of ounces of formula.  You are not a big fan of the bottle/formula combination, so it is a bit of a battle to get you to drink the formula.

Are you going to eat that?

You still are not sleeping through the night, usually you wake up at 2 AM and 5 AM for a night cap.  We are still waiting for some little teeth to appear, but the lack of teeth has not slowed down your food consumption.  Mom and I keep expecting them to appear any day.
Maria and you give us little hints at what the future will be like.  Maria likes to play with you, but does not like you to play with her things.  She will wrestle with you and poke you. You tend to retaliate by pinching her or pulling her hair, smiling the whole time.
We took our first family vacation this month.  We drove up to Dallas and stayed at Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park.  Your sister loved it and you tolerated it, and aside from the post vacation cold that you both got, the vacation was a success.

Indoor water park!

As for the day of your eighth month birthday, we didn't do much that was interesting.  The highlight of the day was mom making lemon poppy seed muffins. We are excited to celebrate your 9 month birthday, or as I call it "Longer out than in day".

Calvin at 7 months

Calvin turned 7 months old today, and he gave us an exciting present.  He can now crawl.  To be honest it is more of a protocrawl/low crawl given that he keeps his belly on the ground.  Earlier in the month Amelia and I were taking bets as to whether or not Calvin would crawl or walk first because he didn't seem to be very interested in moving himself around, so imagine our delight when he started sliding himself around on the hard wood floors.  The original motion was all arms, but he is now using his legs to move around a little faster and we wouldn't be shocked if he is crawling with his belly off the ground by the end of the week.

Aside from crawling, Cal is still not sleeping through the night, but generally he only wakes up once a night.  He often wakes up in the morning and plays with his toys for a while.  He coos a happy song and plays with the "Hungry Friends" book or his first preferred wubi, a longhorn with a pacifier attached. 

Cal is an eating machine.  Amelia has taken to making his meals, so he gets amazing concoctions like peas with corn, pears and spinach.  Amelia commented today that he is our all natural child.  He arrived with no epidural (unintentionally), he doesn't get/like formula and he prefers his mom's creations to store bought food.  He is our little organic granola/hippie child.

For his birthday we had our usual Sunday breakfast of Rudy's breakfast tacos.  We went to home depot and bought some mint to replace the potted plants that did not make it through the hundred degree days in August.  Later in the day we went swimming and he spent most of his time in the pool flirting with the life guard.  He would grin, slap the water and hit her with his blue lasers.  She would smile back and the cycle would start all over. 

So close to crawling

It seems that Cal is very much like his sister in that he wants to get moving by crawling.  He is doing a great job of holding himself up when his sister isn't pushing him down.