Beware of the paper chomping mover!

Dear Alice,

You are 8 months old! Blimey, time is racing by and already you are crawling! We had bets as to when you would start, as you’ve been working on building up the muscle power for a good few weeks. You nearly had the moves sussed by the end of the school/kindi hols, but waited till the day you turned 8 months to really show us your best.

Living in a house with creative big sisters there is a constant paper trail for you to follow. Mummy tries her best to keep one step ahead, but quite frankly it is a losing battle. The sooner Charlotte & Sophie wise up and start putting their paper creations on higher ground the better. In the meantime, paper is your number one snack on the go!

And when it comes to crawling, you won’t let anything (or anyone) block your path! Here you are bowling over your big sister Charlotte…

And you are very resourceful. Here you are finding a great use for Daddy’s empty beer box as a ‘walker’. It also doubles up as a drum…

You are such a happy character and still very much our little ‘pet’ of the family, but now you are a ‘mobile’ pet we expect to see a few more challenges as you make your mark. On the vocals you like to hum along to your favourite tunes (‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ and ‘If you’re happy and you know if clap your hands’). Your first word, other than ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’ is…. (drum roll please) CAT! And most of the fluffy toys in the house are also called ‘Cat’. The other word you say, generally in response to eating food, drinking water (and chomping paper) is ‘good’.

Another new party trick is waving and you have the most charming ‘open, close’, gentle sway of the wrist wave. You’ve been working your magic on everyone you meet, and show a penchant for a man in uniform – charming a chief fire officer in Queen Sally’s Diamond Deli the other lunchtime!

You are delighted by light and the games it plays. You love to watch your shadow dance and catch your reflection in the glass. The crystals hanging from the window make rainbows of light dance around the room, which you try to catch.

We wonder what tricks you have in store for us over the next month. You are already pulling up to standing on anything you can find (which sometimes has ‘ouchie’ consequences!). Please try to remember the toilet isn’t a nice thing to learn to pull up to standing on and some things are just too light and will topple over on you – ouch! You have fun going along to Sophie’s Kindi to pick her up. There are plenty of delights to explore and things to pull up on.

You are such a happy bubba and have a great time playing with your Daddy and sisters. You follow Mummy around and help her with the laundry. Today you happily munched on a banana whilst Mummy carried you under one arm and did the vacuuming with the other. You enjoyed plastering Mummy’s top with banana and if you could talk you would have said, ‘Mummy, the high chair is for eating in!’. But Mummy likes to multi-task and prove a woman may have only one pair of hands, but she can make them work like two pairs at times!

Mummy took this photograph of you with your Daddy and big sisters:

We need a photograph of Mummy here on the 8 month round up… ah, there she is – carrying you! Sophie took this photograph down at Oriental Bay. The rest of the photographs are of you with Charlotte – she thought it would be fun to dress you up and you were very happy to go along with it…

You’re never far from Mummy’s side, night and day. Snuggled up on the futon at night you sleep so happily. You nuzzle in and enjoy a few night feeds, but Mummy doesn’t mind. This time won’t last forever and it’s racing by already. Mummy’s happy that now you’ve started solids her milk supply isn’t quite as full on! Finally she can ditch the breast pads without risking serious leakage!

We all love you very much Alice.

Happy 8 months, 4 teeth and crawling!

P.S. Just for fun here’s some photos of Charlotte & Sophie when they were your age.