8 months

You know how some ages just sound older than others?!? Like how 26 seems so much older and scarier than 25? Confession: 8 months is one of those big, scary sounding ages for me. I mean, 8 months, that's closing in on a year. That's old. Anyway, Clare was 8 sweet months old yesterday. For her birthday, she got a paper towel tube, some empty boxes, and a handful of Cheerios. Life is good.

She is now crawling allllllllll over the place. I love watching her explore her little world. I love watching her notice something new (that's been there the whole time), crawl (or "limp-a-scott") her way over to it, and observe it -- with all 5 sense, of course! I love seeing how quickly she learns! Of course, she knows the exact sound to make to get us to come rescue her from whatever predicament she has trapped herself in.

Our little daredevil has finally decided to show a little fear -- of loud noises. She's not a fan of the coffee grinder or the vacuum or Daddy's drill.

She loves books, especially her touch and feel puppy board book, known around these parts as, "The Puppy Book" aka the first baby book I will have memorized. She loves to touch the faces in the pictures while I read.

She jabbers more or less all the time. Lots of "mamamamama" and "dadadadadadadadadad" and "bagadabamanama" and stuff like that. Frequently, when she gets frustrated, she will spit out some short, staccato syllables like "bah!" or "gah!" that I'm pretty sure are the baby version of "Oh drat!" and "By golly!" Or something like that.

More than anything, she continues to light up our lives. We love seeing her little personality develop, but are preeeeeety sure we're going to be investing in some growth suppressing chemicals or something.

And, of course, I marked the day by taking a photo or two: