tatum: eight months (and a few days).

I knew I'd never remember to do a monthly recap on this sweet girl. Time keeps slipping away, you know? Which isn't my favorite at the moment...

But, sweet Tatum at eight months old is a lot of fun. She's "talking" all the time. Sometimes we hear a "mamama" slip out. A "dada" may have slipped out on occasion. Mostly? I think she just likes to hear herself make sounds. She is an excellent sound-maker. She's also an excellent clapper. And I find her rolling around, pausing to clap every so often.

Speaking of rolling, she finally decided that her belly is not the enemy and has started moving all sorts of places. Just yesterday I caught her trying to pull up (not ready!) on a toy. If she keeps trying to pull up in her crib I guess we'll have to move the mattress down. Thankfully she isn't to the point where she can sit herself up yet, so we might have another couple of weeks of the high mattress.

Tatum's slowly discovering the crawling thing. She can get up on her hands and knees and rock like the best of them. It usually ends in a belly flop of some sort. She did manage to move one hand last night... which led us to wondering how in the world we should baby-proof this house. It's a lot more open than the last house we lived in; the boys were all walking around by the time we got here. Having one crawling around will be, um, fun?

We still have an amazing nursing relationship going on, which I am very, very thankful for. A little after six months we started offering a little food. Sometimes it's baby food, and sometimes it's table food. She especially likes her mama's waffles and pancakes. Mac & cheese was on the menu last night and she had no arguments with it. She's taking after Graham in the teeth department. Current count? Zero. Graham was almost a year old before his first one popped through. (Cayden was about seven-ish months. Sawyer was maybe six months?)

She still loves her brothers fiercely. She has a stronger relationship with Sawyer (perhaps because they're basically twins?) and he can make her belly laugh better than anyone else. It'll be interesting to see how all of their relationships develop over the years.

We're already three-fourths of our way through her first year. I find myself buying cute things for her first birthday party as I come across them. Slightly neurotic? Perhaps, but I'm afraid I won't be able to find the same things come August.