8 months old - 22 pounds of pleasure

Yesterday Miles turned 8 months old. For some reason that age just seems SO OLD to me. Though he is still an infant he's now a mobile infant. And that mobility makse such a difference. It's still not walking unassisted but he can really get accross a room now, whether holding on to furniture and "cruising" as they call it (I just picture babies at bars with cigarettes when I hear that) or belly wiggling accross the room or even actual crawling which he will sometimes engage in.

He's knows plenty of baby tricks to get his point accross without words.

Exhibit 1: Morning time circa sunrise. Infant Miles awakes delighted to be alive. Looks over at sleeping Mommy and determines that she has had enough sleep and should now wake up and entertain him with belly tickles, raspberries on belly, kisses and wrestling. So he approaches Sleeping Mommy with 2 pronged attack. First, pull hair, preferably the hair near the front, small bunch so it really hurts and alarms her to protect self from possible bald spot. Next close in with open mouth really sloppy, I mean to say extremely wet baby kisses that also go "mmmmmmmmmm". Aim for Sleeping Mommy's mouth but failing that suck on chin or nose. When sleeping mommy opens eyes very irritated at possible bald spot he gives a bright smile with twinkling eyes and roll back to engage me to chase him around the bed and play. Repeats as necessary until I give up and am awake and playing at 5:30 in the morning.

Exhibit 2: About an hour after waking it is bottle time. If he is hungry he will start whining when he sees the bottle but not full out crying. He watches me make the bottle and makes this little anticipatory whinging sound only bursting into full tears and crys when we sit on the couch and the bottle is 2 seconds from landing in his mouth. Why does he do that? I can only guess it is his way of cheering me on to get the bottle made then giving me some negative reinforcement by the relief from hearing the crying.

NOTE:
This post was a lot longer but I lost a lot of it when the internet went down and right now do not have the heart to try to recreate. Suffice it to say that Miles is doing many typical 8 month old baby things and is progressing to adulthood in, ahem, baby steps.