Full speed ahead

Nico ushered in seven months with style. From Friday the 6th until Monday the 9th, he mastered sitting up from just about any starting position, figured out proper hands-and-knees crawling, and started pulling up to his knees in his crib and at the baby gate.





I put him to bed Wednesday night, and instead of sleeping he figured out how to pull all the way up to his feet. The next day, my dad came over and helped me move Nico's mattress all the way down to the lowest setting. While we had it taken apart, it also made good sense to go ahead and move the crib into Nico's nursery. I'd been planning to move him during the last two weeks of August, but I guess I expected to have a few days to prepare myself first. I suppose it sounds silly, but I was kind of sad to have him move out. It was for the best, though, because he's been practicing standing up every chance he gets.



On Thursday at our nursing group meeting, he weighed in at 22 pounds, 1.2 ounces, and is officially too big for his baby carseat. On Saturday, he was chewing on my finger and I felt the corner of his first tooth poking out of his gum.

I have a friend who rather aptly pointed out that anything babies do is remarkable, considering they basically start out as barnacles. And it's true, really. All of this new stuff he's doing, he figured it out on his own. Sure, we give him the chance to practice and encourage him along the way, but he just merrily barrels along, ticking off milestones and getting into new kinds of mischief. A year ago we were about to find out that we were expecting a boy, and now he's crawling and babbling and eating oatmeal and learning to stand on his own two feet. It's a crazy world, man. Just crazy.