8 Months

Dear North,

Everyone has been warning me of how quickly the time passes when you watch your child grow; but here I am astounded that you're eight months old already. In the past month, you've started crawling at the speed of light, pulling up on everything, falling down continuously and exploring anything you can get your little paws on.

While I think the change in you is awesome, I'm tired just thinking about the effort it takes to keep an eye on you these days. You gravitate towards the very objects that are the most lethal. There is a basket of toys in our baby-proofed living room, but you prefer to venture off into the more dangerous parts of the house seeking out power cords, the dog's water bowl or the towering antique fire extinguisher. You are a baby on a mission and that mission seems to be to inflict as much pain on yourself as possible.

I often amuse myself by pretending you are a safety inspector pointing out all the possible dangers in our home. "OK ma'am, I think I found your problem. See this cord here, an unsuspecting baby could bite into this, like so. Or the baby could pull on the cord like I'm doing now and BOOM the TV falls on him. Or maybe the baby accidentally gets the cord around his neck. See how easy that was for me to do? Ma'am, you really need to take care of some dangers in the house before someone gets hurt.....oops, uh Ma'am, it appears I have created a turdle in my diaper, could you possibly remove that for me?"

Unfortunately, with all this new mobility, comes an onslaught of scrapes and bruises. Somehow, it's always your face that takes the brunt of the punishment. Maybe because you have such ample padding everywhere else? But you take the fall like a stoic little soldier and only cry when it is a particularly hard landing. Your father and I try not to react when you crash land, having learned quickly that you look to us for a reaction as if to say, "should I cry now?"

You've become a much better eater lately and you've even started gobbling up a few table foods like cheese, peas and pancakes. Every Sunday morning your dad makes blueberry pancakes and now you are a part of our favorite family tradition too! Watching you chow down on tiny fistfuls of pancake this past Sunday made my heart soar thinking about all the future pajama-clad mornings that lie ahead. We have at least eighteen years worth of pancakes to eat with you and I plan on savoring each and every delicious bite.