We can't stopped talking about it! Mary is so amazing, and Greg and I are totally infatuated with her. At eight months old, she is at the peak of baby cuteness: Old enough to have opinions, personality quirks, mobility, and a sense of humor, as well as some chunkiness, charm, and insatiable curiosity. But young enough to be 100% baby--innocent, guileless, without an ounce of that mischievous spirit that comes with toddlerhood.
Besides that irresistible cuteness, Mary consistently amazes us with her determination and powers of concentration. When she encounters an object, she carefully turns it over in her hands, holds it to the side of her face, puts it in her mouth, bangs it on the ground, and inspects it from every angle. Greg and I watched in amazement how fast, yet patiently, she figured out how to creep, crawl, pull-up, and we've recently spied her taking a few cruising steps. She's a problem-solver. She thinks about how to get things out of a box and how to get them back in. Two days ago I observed her trying to climb up onto the fireplace. For 20 minutes I sat and watched her try: by holding her weight this way, by pushing that way, by putting her hands here, or her feet there. I watched her carefully think through every possible way she could move her body in an effort to summit the slab. (She never did--I finally got nervous about the concrete and snatched her up for a bath.) We recently introduced her to Cheerios (which have since become her reason for living). Within just a few hours she progressed from awkwardly and often unsuccessfully shoving fistfuls into her mouth to an efficient three-fingered pincher grasp. Mary explores, investigates, experiments, conquers. She does this all independently, quietly, without fanfare.
I know, I know, I haven't described anything that spectacularly amazing. I doubt she's even doing any of these things "early"--I don't know because I never look at child development charts. It's not what Mary does that is so amazing to me and Greg--it's who she is. We can see it in her warm eyes and the light that shines from her soul. We can see her tenacity, her courage, her love of life. God has sent us one amazing child!
