eight months

Wow. Eight months already!  This was a busy month for Kyalo.  This month he learned to sit up by himself, stand up (assisted), army-crawl, and then crawl, he's almost got his pincher grip figured out, and, AND! he's started going to sleep between 6 and 6:30 pm!!! He's not yet sleeping through the night {sigh}, but this new phase is so fabulous. Also, he's been better about taking naps, which has really helped.  I think I just needed to be harder on him me and let him cry it out a bit at nap time. I think the longest I've managed is 20 minutes. Any more than that, and I'm ready to pull my hair out.  I can't quite do that in the middle of the night yet, either. One thing at a time. Besides, I do actually treasure those quiet times when we're together in the middle of the night. He'll only be in my arms for so long, you know, and I try to keep that in mind.

He is so squirmy: non-stop movement, which means getting these monthly pictures is harder and harder.  I had to enlist Dexter's help, which still didn't work so well.  Here are the good pictures from the day.

 {my favorite photo, which is why it is so big :) }

We visited some friends of Dexter's a couple of weeks ago, and one of them kept commenting about how "jovial" Kyalo is. I think that is a perfect word to describe him.  He is such a happy, smiley, easy-going baby, and this has all gone way up since his sleeping has gotten better. I didn't think I could love him any more!  He doesn't seem to have any sense of "stranger danger" which is awesome when I want to hand him off to someone I know, but not so awesome when a stranger picks him up out of the cart in the grocery store as happened today.  Good thing I was right near by!

In other news, we've been inundated with rain. . .as in positively drowning.  But we had some moments of sunshine this morning and we took advantage of them -- I did laundry, with hopes that the blue skies would remain. Alas. I came home to very wet clothes -- and got Kyalo out in the yard.

If the sun would come out and stay, it would be so perfect right now, we'd be spending lots more time outside. As it is, we grab it in fits and bursts as we can.

We love this sun-loving little guy!