8 months and going!

Each month seems to be coming and going even faster and faster. But luckily things just seem to be getting better and better as time goes on. It's so fun as Gavin gets older, he gets so much more interactive and animated.

Some of our boy's new tricks this month include being able to sit up all by himself like a champ. He loves to sit and play with toys, is reaching all around him for toys and other things in sight. On his tummy, he holds his belly up really high off the ground and turns to the side each way. It seems like crawling may not be too far away for him. Tom and I were thinking, though, that it wouldn't surprise us if he didn't just skip crawling and start walking since he LOVES to be standing up, especially on our laps, and tends to squeal a lot when standing like he's so proud of himself. Speaking of being squealy, he's been SO giggly lately, and tends to crack himself up pretty easily, especially when he sticks things in his mouth, like his bib or other toys. He has some favorite "mommy and daddy" toys too that we try to keep away from him--like paper and cell phones because as soon as we take them away he protests and gets pretty mad. It also cracks us up at some of the things that get him rolling in giggles. Yesterday I got him giggling away just by pulling apart the velcro on one of his bibs. And today, we spent a little time at his Godparents, Becky and Jeromy's house, and Tom was bouncing one of their teddy bears from the side to side in front of him and he thought this was just HILARIOUS! There's really nothing as infectious as a baby's laugh. I wish I could just bottle up that laugh for whenever I'm in a bad mood.

This month Gavin has continued to just love his food. We've been ever expanding his range of foods. He's tried lots of fruits and veggies, like apples, bananas, pears, mangoes, blueberries, raspberries, carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, squash, pumpkin, potato, and some "puffs" for babies that more or less melt in their mouth. He's even able to pick up and feed himself the puffs, though he's not a huge fan of them. He still has no teeth yet though we've suspected for awhile that a tooth might be working it's way out.

So one of the other "new" things for Gavin just recently is a little emergence of some stranger danger. He doesn't get upset when new people hold him but we can tell he's giving them a bit of the "evil eye" and looks for either Tom or I for some reassurance.

Best of all this month seems to be the longest time in a long time that Gavin has been mostly healthy. FINALLY! All winter it seemed like he was catching some new bug from daycare every couple weeks. He's continued to sleep wonderfully for us, sleeping normally from 7pm to 6am and then takes 3 regular naps of about an hour each on average.

One of the very exciting parts of this month was celebrating my first Mother's Day as a mother. I can honestly say that being a mother is the best thing EVER and it's even hard to list all the million reasons why. This year Tom, Gavin, and I celebrated by doing Race for the Cure, a race I do yearly and just love. We joked that Gavin "Slept for the Cure" as he was asleep for the whole race, but it was still fun to do it as a whole family! After the race, we went to brunch at Pizza Luce. They have a fantastic brunch menu, I got their Pesto Benedict which was fantastic. Then in the afternoon my parents came over and we had some ice cream cake to finish the day off. Quite a lovely first Mother's Day it was!