8 Months and the story about your name

You just surpassed your 8th month of life and you seem pretty happy with things. You constantly have a big smile on your face which is intoxicating. I never thought about how Miles and Smile resemble each other, almost the same word in a sense. This reminds me that I haven't yet shared with you how we selected your name. I was in high school when I heard the name for the first time. My then art teacher (actually she was a substitute teacher) had a son named Miles. Throughout the years the name has stuck with me. Not to be too corny, but the name just made me smile. I knew I wanted a little Miles some day. We weren't sure about a girl's name so once we knew you were a boy, the choice for me was clear. Luckily your dad liked the name too. Everyone thinks we called you after Miles Davis. With your dad being a Jazz album collector and owner of every Miles Davis recording, the association makes sense, but it's not why we called you Miles. Thinking of Jazz musicians, I also really like the names Mingus and Ella. I don't think your dad would let me use those names though, people might think we are obsessed. Anyways, that's that.

In the last couple of weeks you have been working hard on your bottom two teeth. One of them is almost all the way out and the other one is following closely. Thankfully, it hasn't been bothering you too much.

Your fine motor skills have advanced drastically. You take your hands/fingers deliberatly to touch/grasp something. You hold on to your toys and investigate them closely. You also figured out how to clap and love to do it.

Our new favorite thing is to take baths together. It's hard to imagine how we all three fit into the tub, but we do and it's a blast. Floating in warm water with soft baby, skin to skin. It's wonderful.

You continue to creep around the room and sometimes you position yourself to crawl (but you don't quiet know how to yet). You can pretty much go and get whatever you want, if we let you. A good way to get you to move around is to place a bottle of milk within close proximity. You will do whatever it takes to go and get it. It's fun to watch you do that. You are very serious about your bottle. You know exactly what it is and if you only see it, you want it immediately like you haven't eaten anything all day.

It's Christmas time, but honestly it doesn't really feel like it. We didn't put up a tree this year since we will be out of town over the holiday. Since Thanksgiving we have been really busy and it didn't seem worth it to get a tree. I took some eucalyptus branches from the yard and hang some ornaments on it. At least you get to enjoy a beautiful tree with colorful lights at day care every day.