Nine Months

I tried my best to keep him a little baby. I hardly ever put him down. I think he experienced "tummy time," like, twice. I'm not even kidding.

It took him about eight months, but seems he wised up all at once. There was this week in early July during which he started doing pretty much everything: sitting up, crawling, pulling up, waving, saying words other than Mama and Dada (Yeah! Hi!). He cut his first tooth that week and very abruptly gave up his pacifier.

I was distressed. He knew it and laughed at me. I swear he talks with his eyes: "C'mon, Mama. It's cool. It's fun. I'm fun. You didn't really think you could keep me a baby, did you?"

He turned nine months old on August 2nd. He has four teeth, now, and can navigate the walker like nobody's business. If I hand him a peeled banana or half a peanut-butter sandwich, he knows what to do with it.

He loves to sing along. I maintain that he has the heart of a great singer and will outsing all of us, one day.

He crawls into the playroom to play with his sisters. (I have to watch the sisters like a hawk, though; Clementine tried to pick him up and put him in the doll stroller, and Charleigh put a drum on his head.)

My body is his bed. He's never really fallen asleep without being held except for in his car seat, every once in awhile, in a moving vehicle. He prefers my body to the car seat. Oftentimes--after he's fallen asleep--I can lie him down on my way to bed, but he's always in my arms when I wake up. I can almost never recollect how he got there.

It's the sweetest thing: often, I'll be carrying him around, and he'll just lie his head over on my shoulder or chest and go to sleep. Just like that. Gone.

He hugs back, now, and kisses. Strokes my arm. Holds on.

He's my main man.

This has been merely a record of where we are: not a series of parenting recommendations. I'm a tremendous baby spoiler and have co-slept blissfully with all of my babies. I've pretty much always done what feels right and good to me, and I haven't paid no nevermind to what other parents do or think. We've been extremely happy. The key, in my humble opinion, to happiness as a parent is to do your own deal and hold your head up high.