Dear William,

Today you turned eight months old and you are definitely on the move. You're still not quite crawling, but you're doing the tummy-squirming-army-crawl across the floor. Your dad and I even had to go buy baby gates today as you seem to be itching to try out your awesome technique on the stairs going down to the basement. I'm thinking that's not going to work so well. I started taking you to the playground at the mall, because it's all soft and padded and I can walk around behind you on my knees and hold your arms to balance you and you can walk to your heart's content - something I definitely am not doing on the hardwood floors at home.

You've finally started to eat a decent amount (ie. more than a teaspoon or two at a meal), which is good because we were chucking a lot of baby food out before someone clued me in to the fact that I could just freeze it in individual portions. Um, duh. Now that I've got that system down though, you're eating more and my individual portions are too small. Well, at least now you're getting variety in your meals, I guess, since I never seem to have two cubes of the same food thawed at a time.

One thing that you love to do it to feed yourself... I'm a meanie and won't let you try it with the spoon yet, but we do let you have baby mum-mums (rice cookie/cracker things) and we got a mesh feeder so you can get all the summer's nice fresh fruit. You loved nectarines and would gum those things to death and suck out the tiny bits until nothing was left but the peel.

You'll notice I said gum the nectarines... because you still have no teeth. While I'm happy about that for the breastfeeding, I'm kind of starting to really wonder when the teeth are coming. I've been blaming every fussy/drooly/chewy/non-sleeping episode since you were four months old on the teething, and there are still no teeth. Though the non-sleeping episodes are definitely becoming less... you've slept through the night a few times this month! Well, the medical definition of sleeping through the night anyways. I'm still waiting until you go at least ten p.m to six a.m.

All in all, you've become such a happy little boy... always checking out the world around you - touching, tasting, talking to things. You're definitely more a little boy now than a baby though. I kind of miss the sweet little baby things (especially how much lighter you were!), but you're so much fun now that it more than makes up for it.

Love, Mom