we have liftoff...

Our not-so-little guy turned 9 months old this past week.  Time is passing by at a nauseatingly fast pace.  As I type this, I'm thinking that we will reach the 10 month mark in just a few short weeks and that thought makes me wanna hurl.  Lovely.  But anyways...

There was a brief period of time where we thought James might skip the whole crawling stage and move right onto walking.  He has started to pull himself up to a standing position and has been sitting up on his own and scooting around on his butt for a while now.  Since before he was 6 months old, he was satisfied with his view of the world from the sitting position and no longer wanted to be on his stomach or back - so had no need to teach himself to crawl.  Until now...

I think he started crawling out of sheer boredom.  There are only so many times you can thumb through "Brown Bear" or chomp on the same blocks - especially when you see a bookshelf full of new books and toys that can be pulled down, kitchen cabinets that can be pulled open, and plugs that can be pulled out.  Ever since the day he was born, he has been so observant of his surroundings and has wanted to investigate anything he could get his hands on – and his ability to crawl brings his explorations to another level.

It also gives him a new level of freedom.  He doesn’t have to rely on us to choose which toys he plays with (I use the term “toys” lightly because he would rather play with the cat’s tail, the window curtains, or the kitchen trash).  In fact, he would much prefer to do everything on his own, including feeding himself – which makes dinner time extremely messy.  It’s both sad and exciting to see the progression of a tiny seahorse-looking-thing on an ultrasound to a 9lb. real-life-baby-boy to a crawling-blackberry-stealing-bottle-throwing-top-teeth-sprouting-babbling-laughing-little man.  It’s also sad and exciting (I’ll admit, it’s much more sad than exciting) that as each day passes, he needs me less and less.  I know, we will always need our parents if only on an emotional level but it’s those basic human tasks that he is beginning to own.  It wasn’t too long ago that he relied on me to get food into his mouth, to entertain him, to get him across the room.  I guess I can take comfort in the fact that he already knows that I’ll always be here to support him, cheer him on, and scoop him out of the water if Grammy drops him…