1) I put the baby in his crib while Maya and I were putting away laundry in his dresser, and when I glanced around, I saw him grinning at me over the top of the railing, because he had managed to pull himself into a standing position without any assistance.
2) We had felt that Fuzzy was close to crawling ever since our vacation in California a month ago, and shortly after we got back he started doing a sort-of Army crawl: picture grunts in boot camp forced to crawl under barbed wire while bullets are fired over their heads. That was our Fuzzy, snaking it along the floor without ever pulling his belly off the ground.
Then, a week before his 8 month birthday, he finally sorted out his arms and legs, and started crawling for real...one leg sort of dragged at an odd angle, giving him a slightly crab-like appearance, but nevertheless, it was real crawling, and he was clearly thrilled with himself.
3) In addition to his mobility breakthroughs, this month featured the aforementioned California vacation over the holidays - Fuzzy got to spend his first Christmas and New Years with various grandparents and great-grandparents, being showered with love and presents...oh, so very many presents.
Being close to family gave perks to The Pit and I too - my mom kindly took over Fuzzy's care and feeding for three days while we went to Tahoe for some skiing. Well, the The Pit went skiing - I spent the weekend gratefully sleeping in, and also calling my mother three times a day to check on the welfare of the child.
4) It was also a busy month for communication - about halfway through the month, I was puttering around in the kitchen, with Fuzzy entertaining himself in the highchair next to me. Then he looked up, caught my eye and said "arrrrrgggggggghhhh." So I made the same guttural growling noise back at him, and he got super happy, and made it at me again. So we went, back and forth, mutually delighted. The Pit's first reaction upon witnessing this scene was to ask what was wrong with the baby. He was quite doubtful when I told him that this was a happy noise, and that we were talking to each other. However, after this had been going on for several days, I caught the two of them chatting back and forth in the same way.
5) Unfortunately, argh is the extent of the baby's talking so far - although he has figured out that "no" is an interesting word. I'm not sure that he's fully grasped the meaning, but he's definitely glommed onto the fact that exciting things happen when "no" is shouted at him in panic. He'll reach for some random inappropriate object - dad's dirty shoe, the sharp and heavy fireplace poker, a dining room table place-mat with a full glass of milk on it - and we will tell him "no, no, no!" He will pause in his reaching, look around, see if we are still paying attention, and then reach for the object again, but much more slowly, while also staring at us expectantly, waiting to see what happens next.
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