Eight Months. That's how long he has been out, breathing air, alive in the truest sense. It seems like such a short time, but it is the better part of a year. When I examine today and yesterday side by side it seems that nothing much has changed. Or nothing at all. But if I look back a little further, say four months ago, so much has changed that it seems he is a completely different person. Wow, baby, you sure have grown!
Ruckus still isn't crawling in the conventional sense. He sure can move though. There is no 'You stay there for a minute while mommy goes and does x, y, and/or z!'. That can't happen now, and likely won't happen again for I don't know, many many long years to come. Like 14 years, minimum.
If I put him in his crib he uses the slats to try to stand up. He pulls himself up awkwardly, so determined, then loses interest or his balance and he tumbles down. He has a lot of work to do on his coordination. This is good for me right now but I know that like all of the other challenges he has faced (rolling over was a big one) he will soon conquer this and it will be but a distant and fading memory. When he is not trying to pull himself up with the slats he is shoving his feet in the openings between them. Most of his time spent in his crib is with one or both legs hanging completely outside the crib, in between the slats, sometimes twisted in an opposite direction of his body, which looks terribly uncomfortable. He does not know how to get out of these awkward positions by himself.
If I lay him on his changing table I have to fasten the safety strap, which I wanted to cut off when he was first born because it was always in the way. Now it is the only thing saving his tiny head from being forcibly slammed on the floor as he seems determined to leap from the table without regard to self preservation. I know this is because he has never fallen, has never been injured, and that if he had been he might not be so ready and willing to take the plunge, but I cannot think of a safe way to teach him these lessons. He is too little to let him experience the falls that teach us important lessons of what not to do with our bodies. So I strap him in and he twists and turns and struggles against the strap until he is face down on the table and I am forced to put his diaper on the hard way, with his bottom facing up. I am getting pretty good at this.
If I have him sitting on my lap I must keep a good grip on him, or always have that good grip readiness in the back of my mind, because out of seemingly nowhere he will lunge forward or to the side, to where if I am not holding him he will surely end up in a heap on the floor. Exciting! I also have to keep everything out of his reach, while still being able to reach it myself, so that I can turn the TV channel or sip my coffee without him gumming the remote to death or spilling my coffee in his eagerness to Get That Thing Mom Has. He loves to Get my necklaces too, so I have to be very careful around him when I am wearing a choker, or it lives up to its name.
My dog and Ruckus seem fascinated by each other which I consider to be both a good and bad thing. The dog weighs over 100 lbs., so it will be a very long time before I allow the dog and the baby to play together, which means that I will be spending a very long time trying to keep them apart. I recently got our dog a toy which he loves to play with. For the most part the dog plays with his toy independently. The other day he left his toy near a pile of baby toys before heading off to bed for the night. Ruckus stayed up for a while, and ended up playing with the dog's toy. When I saw this I put the dog's toy up so that a) Ruckus would not get attached to the toy, and b) Ruckus would not be caught by the dog playing with the dog's toy. The next morning, the dog's toy was not where the dog had left it, so the dog grabbed the nearest replacement, a small stuffed Tigger that happens to belong to Ruckus. !!! So in less than 12 hours I had to take the baby's toy from the dog, and give the dog's toy back to the dog which I had to take from the baby. Obviously I have my work cut out for me in keeping these two worlds from colliding. It is like having two kids, but one kid has large teeth and a tail, and the other kid is just a kid who doesn't know any better and is very vulnerable.
For Ruckus' 8 month 'birthday' we had yogurt this morning, with some peaches. He liked it. We will probably have some more tomorrow morning, even though tomorrow will be just a regular day. And I like that. I like that our routine is slowly evolving and becoming more rich with things like fighting to keep from being choked to death by my necklace and picking out a flavor of yogurt and snacks I think the baby will like. I like that I had to buy Ruckus new pajamas last weekend because he couldn't straighten his legs in any of his old ones anymore. It is these little things that sneak up on us that we can either notice or not, they aren't particularly important after all, but if we do notice them our lives will be that much more rich and full.
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