8 months!

Dear Zoe,

You're 8 months old! What a fun 8 months it has been.

Guess what you're doing now?! You're CRAWLING baby girl! And you've also figured out how to pull yourself up to the sitting position from your belly or from the crawling position. Back to crawling...initially you started out with a cute combat crawl and one day you figured out how to support your body weight on your hands and knees (well, one knee). Your crawl is absolutely darling. Instead of crawling on "all fours", you're crawling more like on 3 1/2's because you drag yourself forward on your left knee and right foot. It's so cute! You're so cute! In addition to crawling, you're pulling up on every thing! You really love standing. Daddy is convinced you'll soon be walking; I'm not ready for that.

You love blowing raspberries, Zoe. And you especially love to blow them with a mouth full of sweet potatoes, peas, oatmeal, you name it. I try not to laugh when you do this because I don't want to encourage bad behavior while eating, but it's hard not to laugh. Even when I have peas speckled all over my face. Speaking of food, this month we added butternut squash, sweet potatoes, prunes and peaches to your menu, all of which you love. Daddy and I really enjoy making your food. It's wonderful knowing that you are getting healthy, organic food without the preservatives found in jarred food. And it's homemade especially for you with lots of love.

You're still taking your swimming lessons and you're doing well at it. You continue to go under water without any trouble and you've even started to kick your legs a bit when "swimming" toward Daddy.

Your personality is starting to come through more and more. You've become somewhat tempermental and you seem to yell at us sometimes when we're not moving fast enough for you or when we don't pick you up on demand. I hope this is just your frustration at not being able to talk to us to tell us what you want as opposed to something that will remain.

You give the sweetest kisses, Zoe. Mostly you kiss Daddy and me when asked, but you often will surprise us with spontaneous kisses. Mommy likes to jokingly say you give "french kisses" because you like to kiss mommy by sucking on my bottom lip. It's pretty funny and oh so sweet. I could kiss you forever. In fact, I will kiss you forever, even when you all grown up and think it's embarassing. :-) Okay, maybe not...

Zoe, you're developing object permanence. When we hide objects under things like throw pillows, you will start looking for the object we hid. Mommy and Daddy recently played a game with you where Mommy was hiding behind Daddy. You were trying to look over Daddy's shoulder to find Mommy. Although it sounds simple, that really warmed our hearts.

This month Daddy and you went on your first playdate together. You met up with one of the Gy.bore.e mommies and her daughter, Sasha. The four of you went to the Dallas Ar.bor.etum. Daddy reports that you all had a great time. Hopefully this will be the first of many playdates for Daddy and you.

Zoe, your two favorite people in the world continue to be Mommy and Daddy. That works for us because you're our favorite little girl! You also still enjoy being held a lot. While some parents would find it burdensome, we love cuddling you because we know that one day you'll outgrow it and we'll miss these special moments. You've developed stranger anxiety in the last month, so you cling onto Mommy and Daddy extra tight when unfamiliar people are nearby. Although we want you to have a healthy awareness of strangers, we hope you'll soon outgrow some of this.

Zoe, we love you so much! Not only are you adorable, but you are lovingly adored. You make every day special and better. We love you!

My love always,

Mommy

8 month photo

(these pictures are getting more difficult to take now that Zoe's so active)

Random Photos