Eight Months

Dear Oliver,

You are eight months old (yesterday), and you are on the move.  You don't crawl yet, but you get onto your hands and feet (not knees, usually), down onto your belly, roll over, sit up... you are surprisingly efficient at covering ground in this way.  You will also lay on your tummy and push yourself backwards if you're on the hard wood floor.

You continue to prefer standing to any other mode of being.  Your daycare lady says you pull yourself up to standing in your crib, but I haven't seen you do it at home yet.  You will pull yourself up if we give you a hand or a knee to grab onto.  And you sit up in your crib as soon as you wake up, which was new this month.

Along with this moving thing, you have become very difficult to dress!  I used to be able to lay you on the changing table and get your clothes on with minimal fuss.  I mean, sure, your arms would go limp when I'd like you to push them through sleeves, or rail straight when I need you to bend them, and as soon as I'd try to get the second leg into pants you'd pull the first one out, but those things I can deal with!  (Someone once likened dressing a baby to stuffing an angry octopus into a very small bag.  Accurate.)  Now, though, you flip over and sit up and twist away.  You don't have time for clothes!  There are things to see over there, and... over there, and over there!

You are now efficient at getting small bits of food (avocado, banana, rice puffs) into your mouth with relative accuracy.  You have tried things like Indian food and grown-up soup (both a bit spicy!), and you loved them.



This month, there was Thanksgiving, fish-feeding, and meeting Uncle Nick for the first time.  You went to a holiday picnic with your baby-friends.  You decorated your first Christmas tree, "watched" It's a Wonderful Life for the first time, and met Santa!

It was a big month!

Love,
Mom

Giving Thanks

I love the Holiday season.  The weeks starting with Thanksgiving and ending with New Year's are my favorite of the year.  I love spending time with family and friends.  I love the music, the decorations.  I love the kind, giving spirit that's (mostly) all around.

It's true that you should be charitable all year round, and not just the last 1/12th of the year.  It's true that you should be thankful every day.  And I do my best, but let's be honest.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  It's hard to show gratitude when you're going on too little sleep, trying to juggle work stress and not-work stress, and dealing with your third diaper blow-out of the day, y'know?  So it's nice to have five or six weeks of the year when those things--charity and gratitude--are foremost in my thoughts.

I have a lot to be thankful for: the best family one could hope for; an amazing husband and partner; a pretty excellent group of friends; a job (and boss!) I do actually like, despite it not being the career I dreamed of; our health; and Oliver.  Definitely Oliver.

(This Thanksgiving, the baby we lost would have been a year old.  I'm thankful for that baby, too.)

Thanksgiving has become our holiday to host, Steve and I.  We bring out the fancy wedding dishes and have both family and friends over.

There was lots (and lots, and lots) of delicious food, good conversation, and laughter.  Holiday success!

Thanksgiving doesn't end on Thursday in this family.  My fabulous new boss let each of us choose to be on call ("working from home" in the sense that, if one of our offices needs us, we answer the phone) either the Friday after Thanksgiving or the day after Christmas.  Since I'm on vacation the week of Christmas, I chose Friday.  I had a few phone calls and had to run into the office once, but otherwise it was a relaxing day of lunch out and a trip to the park with the family.

With Grandma S

Is Daddy being silly?

Watch out for Uncle Tim!

On Saturday, we went to the Filmore Fish Hatchery.  Have you ever been to a fish hatchery?  I hadn't.  There are long canals full of fish (these were trout... I think?), and you get an overflowing handful of fish food for a dime.  The fish get so excited about the food that they end up jumping out of the water.

Full disclosure: I think fish are super creepy.  But!  It was pretty neat to see them clamoring for food, and Oliver was mesmorized.

Saturday night, Steve and I got to go out to dinner and a movie with some friends to celebrate my birthday!  (My birthday was Wednesday, but babysitters on Saturday are fine by me!)  We saw Catching Fire, which I thought was pretty excellent.  Especially now that we so rarely get to see movies.  I want to go back and reread the books, which I thought about doing before the movie, and decided against.  (If I've read a book too close to seeing the movie, I tend to get hung up on details that are changed and get mad.)  Enjoyed the movie, I'll enjoy the book again.

And then Sunday, we said goodbye to the family, farewell to Thanksgiving, and hello to Christmas!

The tree is up, the house is decorated (except for outside lights, which we'll do this weekend when it's light out again).  It's A Wonderful Life was watched by all, even Oliver.

Obligatory naked-baby-with-lights picture

Singing with Caitlin! (she voiced the small penguin)

I love the holiday season!