Eight months old

The most beautiful baby boy in the entire world is eight months old.

I mean, COME ON! How on earth am I ever going to be able to say No to this precious little person? When he stares at me with those blue eyes and then cracks a huge two-and-a-half-tooth grin, it is physically impossible for me to not grab his chubby cheeks and try to put his big bald head in my mouth. If this kid would start sleeping through the night, I’m pretty sure he would qualify as the most perfect baby ever created.

Yes, we are still working out the kinks in the sleeping department. And I’ll blame teething and colds and whatever else I can come up with, but what it boils down to is that as chilled-out and happy as Luke is during the daylight hours, when it’s time to sleep he just wants to be in MY arms. And while I adore my son and realize that at some point he’s not going to want to be rocked to sleep, I AM EXHAUSTED. And no expensive undereye cream or concealor can mask the overtiredness that has taken over my body. But THANK GOD! for my borderline-unhealthy addictions to coffee and exercise-induced endorphins, and for my ever-tolerant and helpful husband. Otherwise I would have totally hit the wall by now.

So during the time spent when the sun is up, we are having a blast watching Luke’s little personality develop. He is just so happy, and when he gets really excited he whoops like a bird, swings his arms in the air and bounces up and down on his tush so enthusiastically you would think there was a pot of gold in front of him. But it’s just a plastic ring entertaining him, or a glimpse of his big sister running through the room, or a little roly-poly time on the carpet with Ruby.

Something that is sure to put him in a delightful mood is his bath. And now that he is so stable sitting up, we just let him freestyle in the tub without a baby-bather. And he’ll just sit there and pump his arms up and down and up and down in attempts to pop all the bubbles and splash every drop of water out of the tub. It’s adorable. But you just need to make sure you’re at a reasonable distance if you want to get pictures.

Playtime is getting more and more fun for Luke, as he is totally content just sitting in the middle of his big, soft blanket with a bunch of toys surrounding him. We’ve tried bribing him with every shiny, plastic thing in the toybox to get him to crawl, but as soon as he flips over onto his back he just starts doing the happy carpet-dance and forgets all about getting onto all fours. And as anxious as I am for him to reach that milestone, I am totally fine with him waiting until after the Christmas tree is gone before going mobile. Because cleaning fistfuls of pine needles out of a baby’s mouth sounds pretty awful.

But he will crawl eventually. And I also know that at some point he is going to sleep through the night. And somewhere down the road he’s going to be too big for me to wrap my arms around his soft, warm body and snuggle in the rocking chair in the wee hours of the morning. So I need to enjoy these baby-moments – His smiling and shrieking and splashing, because when he’s grown, these are the things that I’ll miss the most, and NOT the sleeping. And no matter how old he gets, he will always have my heart wrapped around his finger, and I will never ever be able to frown at him while he’s looking at me with those big, blue eyes.