Zoe is Eight Months Old

Dear Zoe,
Writing these newsletters each month is daunting. I always feel like I’m struggling to find enough to write about, but by the time I’m done, I’ve managed to find plenty to talk about. This month, for example, you got your first tooth, said your first word (sort of), kissed your momma for the first time, and wore an octopus costume for Halloween.

You got your first tooth this month! All that teething finally paid off when one of your bottom front teeth broke through. When your cousin Milo’s first tooth broke through, he started sleeping well again, but we didn’t see that with you, because you were fighting off a cold. About a week after your cold passed, we did notice that you were sleeping better and you were much less irritable (it’s funny to write that, because you’re one of the most cheerful and easy-going babies I’ve ever known, but when you’re teething you have a lower tolerance when things aren’t going exactly the way you want).

Speaking of changes, I just realized this morning that I can’t remember the last time you spit up. There was a period of time a few months ago when picking you up without a burp rag was asking for trouble, but now I’m not even sure where the burp rags are. I guess it’s one of those changes that happened so gradually it was easy to miss.

Lately, you’ve been having sleeping problems again, and we’re not really sure what it is. Personally, I think it’s a combination of factors — from gas and teething to a really mild cold. As a result, even though we put you down in your crib every night, you rarely sleep more than an hour or two before you wake up screaming. When we pick you up, you immediately calm down, and usually fall back asleep on our shoulder, but you start fussing again when we lie you down. Most times, your mom has to nurse you back to sleep, and as a result, many mornings I wake up to find you in bed with us, because it’s easier for your mom to take care of you if she doesn’t have to get up and run into your room every few hours all night long.

You’ve been enjoying your new ability to sit, and we’re now to the point where you’re stable enough that we feel safe setting you down on carpeting without having to worry about you flopping over and slamming your head into the floor. You still get off-balance sometimes, but you almost always catch yourself when you tip forward, and when you tip backwards, your reflexes are fast enough to flail your arms forward and avoid falling, most of the time.

You’re also incredibly flexible, and you seem to be getting more so every day. Several times now, I’ve watched you in a sitting position spread your legs outwards, lean forward, slide your legs back, and smoothly end up on your tummy. I’ve even seen you do it in reverse to get back into a sitting position from the floor. You can get to crawling position from sitting by leaning forward over one leg in a way that looks painful, but apparently doesn’t bother you.

You’re not crawling yet, but you frequently get up onto your knees and rock back and forth, so I don’t think it’s far off. In the meantime, I’ve only seen you scoot around on your bottom a bit, but it doesn’t seem intentional. It’s more like as you change from position to position, you have a tendency to scoot backwards.

You took a bottle from me for the first time the other day, and you’ve done it a few times for your mom. Hopefully this will open up new and exciting possibilities for date nights for your mom and I. You’ve also had solid food a few more times, and you seem to enjoy it a little more each time. We fed you some banana baby food the other night and you were pretty into it, grabbing the spoon and guiding it into your mouth so you can suck the food off. You’re old enough now to try lots of exciting new things, and your mom is looking forward to trying some other fruits like peaches and blackberries. I think it’s not going to be long before we get to play the game where we feed you new foods just to watch you make that sour face and then ask for more.

Your sense of humor is starting to develop. You still enjoy a good zerbert, or being tickled, but you also now enjoy the more sophisticated humor of me putting you on my head like a hat, or dangling the legs of your pants over your face when I’m changing your diaper. You still don’t really understand peek-a-boo, but you laugh anyway because we’re laughing and making funny noises.

First words are complicated. Technically, you’re not supposed to count any of the baby syllables (ma, da, ba, ga), but I no longer care. As far as I’m concerned, you said your first word last week. Your mom told me that a few times you would see me walk out of the room and sit there saying “dadadadadadada” to yourself, but I pretty much dismissed that as just regular baby babble, and didn’t figure it had anything to do with me. Last week, however, your mom brought you into the bedroom to wake me up for work. I was facing away from you, and you were sitting behind me, grabbing at my hair and ears when you very clearly said “Da-Da.” When I rolled over, you started smiling, and at that point, I stopped caring whether it was “just” baby syllables.

Of course, my favorite thing lately is that you’ve started expressing that you love us. It can be something simple like the way that you watch a door your mom just walked through, waiting for her to come back out of it, or the way you grab onto my shirt and put your head down on my shoulder when I pick you up in the middle of the night. My favorite moments are watching you when you’re nursing, because you usually have your foot up touching your mom’s neck, your hands playing with her hair, and the whole time you’re looking her in the eyes and making quiet little happy noises to yourself.

There were a few extra-special moments lately, though. One is that you gave your mom a kiss the other night. I was sitting on the couch with the two of you, and you were playing with your mom’s face like you do when you suddenly opened your mouth wide and leaned in like you were going to bite her — but you just sat there for a moment, with your face pressed against her cheek. Then you pulled back and did it again, but this time ending up nose-to-nose, which was so cute that I laughed, and then you started laughing, still holding your face against hers, and then all three of us were laughing. I’ve never seen you do that before, and it was absolutely adorable.

The other special moment is that when you laid down for a nap with your mom the other day, she pulled you into a spooning position, with your back to her front. Normally, you won’t let us do this. You start kicking and squirming until you’re on your back, and you can roll over to face us. This time, though, you let her, and the two of you slept like that for a couple of hours. Even cuter, you were holding your little rag-doll baby. I wish I had been able to get a photo - I can’t think of anything more adorable than that must have been.

I love you, baby girl!