7 Months

Today our boy hit the big 7 month mark. It's been an extremely hectic month for our family - I went back to work, followed very closely by Mike's injury and surgery, visits from family for help and fun and unexpected day care for Dylan. He is such an amazing little guy and able to roll with the punches....often with much more grace and adaptability than ourselves.

Dylan has been a joy to be around for all of the many people that have helped us out during the last several weeks. Grandparents and friends that already loved him, fell even harder. New sitters, teachers and neighbors got to know him and love him. It's hard not to...he's a pretty awesome little fella. His Mimaw is just head over heels with him after her week caring for him and she just misses him tons. Dylan's day care teachers are trying to convince me to keep him there full time...he's a joy to have in their class and normally the most mellow and happy of the bunch.

Day care, while not our first choice of child rearing, has been good for him in many ways. He's been doing daily art projects, perfecting skills by watching other babies (like eating and sitting up) and has learned tons of new skills. Now, I realize that these skills would have come naturally with time, but I can't help but attribute some of his new life lessons to the older babies he observes daily. The biggest of these new lessons is pre-crawling movements. Not only has he gotten very good at pushing backwards by using his hands and arms (what I've read is a pre-crawling movement) but he's been getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth this week. In fact, today, on his 7 month birthday, Mike observed him moving his right knee just a little bit forward in this position. So, looks like crawling is in his near future!

Dylan has really discovered his voice and has been babbling on a regular basis. Up to this point, it's been primarily vowel sounds. This morning, though, Dylan discovered the consonant "d." The first time we heard the "dadada" babble was this morning. Apparently, he's pretty impressed with this new sound and has been making it all day long. Thanks to our handy dandy iphones and quick access to video, we've caught a few of these moments. We're amused, what do you think?

Of course, as all babies do, he's eating and growing like a weed. It's amazing to me how quickly he grew in and out of his 6 month clothes. He still can wear some of the 6 month clothes (even 3 months in some things) but is fitting better in some of the 9 month outfits.

With me back at work and Mike out of Daddy commission, we've been missing him tons. He's just so much fun to be around and it stinks to have to be away from him so much. One of the other positives of him being in day care is that he's just a couple of buildings away from me at work. I visit him daily in the afternoons. It's certainly great to see him, but hard to leave him again to go back to work through the end of the day. Seriously, would you want to leave this face?