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LL turned 8 months old this past week. That's 2/3 of a year! A picture of his many skills and hobbies, to date:

Physical Skills! He's a master sitter now, but still no interest in crawling (thank goodness!). Still, he technically entered the realm of mobility by figuring out how to scoot along the floor on his back, headfirst, in a purposeful inchworm style (as opposed to the random flailing that moved him around occasionally in the past). But since he rarely lies on his back when he's out of his crib (why lie down when you can sit?) it's not really doing him much good. On the other hand, just by continuing to grow taller and stronger, he can now reach his mobile while lying down in his crib, so we had to remove it before he pulled the whole thing down on himself. (He still looks a little sad when he goes in his crib, since his mobile friends aren't there anymore. We added his teddy, Bingo Bear, to his crib as a replacement friendly face.) He shows very little interest in standing or pulling up. Some parents might be concerned at this lack of physical prowess at eight months of age, but S and I are just counting our blessings that we can get away with not finishing the baby-proofing for a few more weeks. (Take your time, kiddo. Those crystal wine glasses dangling just out of reach aren't going anywhere.)

Waving! He waves "hello" and "bye-bye." And by "wave," I mean that he sticks one arm out and opens and closes his fist. I saw him do "bye-bye" first, waving goodbye to Rosie at the end of the day. He added "hello" a day later, welcoming S home from work. And, intrigued by how everyone smiled and clapped whenever he did it, he has now taken to randomly waving at toys, plants, and furniture, in an attempt to get further applause.

Communicating! He asks to be picked up, by patiently holding both arms over his head in the classic baby "uppy" pose. This accomplishment is not only extremely cute, but also useful, since in addition to doing this when he wants to snuggle, he also does it as a way of letting us know that his diaper is wet and he'd like to be carried into his nursery for a change, please. We now have less whining about diapers! Yay! Though, oddly, after calmly requesting the diaper change, he then screams bloody murder as soon as we put him on the changing table, unless we launch into very loud singing of the ABC Song, on repeat, until he is dressed again.

Playing! LL is addicted to blocks. He will patiently watch me build a block tower, waiting until at least block four or five before knocking it down. When he sees a taller tower, he practically hyperventilates in anticipation of knocking it down. When presented with a box full of blocks, he will deliberate long and hard before deciding which blocks he would like to carefully pick up and place on the floor next to him. (I haven't yet figured out his selection criteria.) And, when there's no box and no tower, he will patiently chew on a single block while waiting for somebody to play a game with him. Thankfully, he has not yet learned how to throw.

Bath Time! LL has enjoyed bath time for a while now, but it's worth mentioning how much this kid loves playing with water. Especially moving water. Pouring water out of a cup, holding a showerhead in front of him, watching the faucet... all fascinating. And when we don't provide enough movement, he happily splashes to create waves of his own. Sometime soon, we're going to have to move his infant tub out of the kitchen sink, because the puddles on the floor are getting a little hard to deal with.

Music! LL loves being sung to, despite having two completely tone-deaf parents. We currently have about a dozen songs in our repertoire, ranging from traditional (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) to kid music (Down by the Bay), from folk songs (am I the only one who knows My Name is Yon Johnson? LL loves being bounced around the house to this one) to completely inappropriate parody rap (S has developed his own censored versions of Saturday Night Live parodies; current favorite is I'm On A Boat, but only because I banned him from singing Motherlover. Because really... ick!). Also, after months of refusing to listen to anything on the FM dial that wasn't NPR, LL has finally come around to appreciating some classic rock, with the Beatles at the top of his list.

Reading! LL has discovered literature. He loves loves loves books. Being read to is the best, but he will also pick up books on his own and attempt to flip the pages. Though, more often than not, flipping pages becomes tiring, and he resorts to chewing on them instead. Yum.

Eating! Cold pureed food: good! Warm pureed food: eh. Finger food: mysterious. We have started trying him on pureed meats (so far, just chicken) and have confirmed what we discovered about fruits and vegetables: foods that LL loves either room temperature or cold are completely rejected when heated to luke warm. I guess it's okay, because it's certainly easier on us to just serve everything to him cold, but still... weird. As for finger foods... he eats rice crackers, but we can't tell if he enjoys the taste, or just the novelty. He finds smaller foods (eg, little bite-sized puffs) to be more frustrating than fun, unless I put them in his mouth myself, which sort of defeats the purpose. And when I tried giving him a tiny chunk of banana, he repeatedly spit it out rather than eating it, even though he adores pureed bananas. So, for now, we're sticking with cold food on spoons.

Sleep! Every time we have a nighttime sleep breakthrough, LL gets sick. (Yeah, apparently getting a good night's sleep just overwhelms his immune system.) We had an awesome week where LL slept through the night five out of seven nights, and then he got sick again. The suspected ear infection was not an ear infection, it was just a minor head cold on top of the usual teething. For almost a week, he coughed and pulled on his ear but was otherwise in a fantastic mood, and then this weekend he moved from minor head cold to major head cold, the worst he's ever had. Horrible congestion and sneezing and coughing, and obviously a lot of pain and discomfort. The past several nights, the only way LL would sleep was propped up in my arms. He's mostly better today, but we still kept him home from daycare, in an attempt to be good citizens. As soon as the congestion is gone, we're hoping that he goes back to sleeping through the night.

Growing! I've been having more of those days where I get home from work and become convinced that in the six hours I was gone, somebody took my baby and replaced him with a larger version. At eight months old, he's tipping the scale at 19 pounds. That is still on the low end for his age, but it seems huge to me. We haven't measured his length lately, but he's sticking out of his infant car seat in unflattering ways, so he has clearly grown vertically as well. His face is maturing, too, and he's looking more and more like a little boy instead of a baby. And his hair is filling in, silky soft and curling a little at the ends. Good thing that he's keeping his puffy squirrel cheeks!

We leave for our college reunion in one week. I'm growing more and more calm about LL's ability to handle the time difference and general upheaval of being away from home, and more and more nervous about the flight. The thought of six straight hours on an airplane with him makes me a little nauseous. But I am feeling a bit giddy about showing him off to our friends.