Dear Brooklynn,

Today, I am almost positive that you are eight months old. In case you aren’t quite familiar with February quite yet, it’s over in a scant four weeks which adds up to 28 days. You were born on June 29th, so I’m not quite sure how that works out for keeping track of age. Luckily, by the time you’re out of diapers, people don’t care so much about months as they do years, so this will be a short-lived problem.

Looking back, I realize that it has been over a month since you’ve been out of the hospital. Life didn’t get back to normal quite that fast – we had oxygen tanks and a large noisy machine that made pure oxygen an at-home pulse-oximeter. We had infant canulas and baby-sized LED O2 monitors. And then you finally got over the hump and quit it all. Back to normal, or whatever passes for normal these days.

Normal these days involves much standing, standing on laps, on the floor, next to futons and the bath tub, pretty much anywhere you can get your feet under you. You’re not fully stable and need something or someone to hold onto. Humans (mostly your mom and me) do a pretty good job at keeping you upright, but it’s hard to take pictures and hold you at the same time, so we resort to propping you against various items. The couch is a little high, the exersaucer a little wobbly, and the tub is a little cold, but crib rails and futons are just right.

Seeing as how you are standing and might actually be headed toward walking and running sometime in the next year or so, perhaps it’s time to consider, oh, rolling over? We can count on one hand the number of times you have officially rolled over from your back to your stomach completely by yourself on one hand. And the number of times you have successfully followed that with a roll from stomach to back didn’t take you right back where you started? Well, it’s a whole number that’s less than one.

(I’ll wait until you know enough math to figure that one out. Hint: it isn’t negative.)

I like to joke that in a half year, you will be able to run around but only if someone actually sets you on your feet and if you fall down on your back you will be immobile like and overturned turtle. It would be funnier if sometimes I didn’t worry it was going to be true.

Honestly, we do have hope for you future mobility. A week ago, after one of those rare back-to-front rollovers, you managed to push yourself backwards all the way across the living room in a no-leg reverse crawl sort of motion. You stopped when your legs got wedged under the TV stand and you looked pretty concerned at what was happening the entire time, but that was the farthest you have moved on your own up to this point.

While we may have concerns about your lack of self-powered movement (and at the same time, we admit it is still nice to have a house that doesn’t require baby proofing), we don’t worry about your vocal development. You babble, squawk, screech, smack and scream with stunning regularity. We don’t have a clue as to what you are telling us, but the communication is definitely coming along. The latest addition to your repertoire has been blowing raspberries and buzzing your lips together. It’s very attractive and I’m sure you’ll get good use out of that life skill if you become a tuba player or something like that.

Our house is slowly falling toward controlled chaos with the toys that we go through every day keeping you entertained. There are times when a colored plastic ring will keep you entertained for an hour and others that flashing lights and music can’t hold your interest for more than a few seconds. I’m beginning to suspect that the more a toy costs and the more batteries it uses, the shorter it will actually entertain a baby. Currently, some of the best toys you have are plastic tupperware bowls and an empty two-liter pop bottle. Every time we hand that bottle to you, you squeal with delight and look at it as if to say “This huge thing is just for me? Awesome!”

In short, you are a noisy, opinionated, demanding two foot four inch, 21 pound ball of personality. And we wouldn’t change a thing about you. (Although, if you wanted to sleep the entire night in your own bed with any consistency, we won’t complain.)

Love,
Dad