It's Great to be Eight (months)!

It is absolutely incredible how much Aiden has grown in just the past couple weeks. About three weeks ago, it was weird to see him move into a sitting position from laying on the ground and now he has taken over everything in the house. Well, everything three feet off the ground and below. He has tried many new foods. French fries, Jolly Ranchers (thanks to Daddy) and lemons, which he actually liked, to name a few. But mostly his getting-around abilities have multiplied greatly. And there is another tooth, which brings the total to a whopping seven.
He is now able to pull himself up on just about any surface, and can climb up onto low-lying objects which makes the running-after factor greatly increase. And earlier this week, he started to cruise along the couch. I was sitting on it, and he half army-crawled, half really crawled over to me, pulled himself up, and was trying to climb onto the couch (not quite enough coordinated for that feat, yet) and then I moved to the other end, and up until the other day, he would have fallen down, crawled over to me and then pulled himself up, but he is a new man, moving on up in the world. He is above all that nonsense, he just cruises right along the couch over to me now.


This does, however, make the bumps go up. He is testing out most everything and sometimes he is just not able to handle them. So he falls down a lot and bumps his head a lot, but then he sees something else in this new perspective on the floor and goes right after it and forgets all about his woes.
He is definitely into the interacting mode and loves especially to play with Zelda, which I am so grateful she is a patient dog. He will climb all over her and chew on her ears and give her giant slobbery kisses on the top of her head, and she will sit there and take it as long as she can get a kiss in every once and a while. Which I'm not upset about because the best do's come from Zelda licking his hair. Just sometimes she gets a little excited and forgets she is a 60+ lb dog and not a little puppy, so I have to intervene and calm everyone down so it can start anew.

He is much more vocal and has started to make sounds that sound like actual words. When he gets really excited, he will lift up his arms into the air and it sounds like he is saying "YAY!!" Only at super-sonic levels. And when he gets upset he will say momma over and over and over again. Sometimes I like to think he is actually calling out to me. This always proves fruitful when he does this because nine times out of ten, he will start blowing giant spit bubbles and he gets a kick out of that.
One thing, however, I am not so excited about in this growing up process is he is now a biter. He hasn't really bitten anyone other than Thomas and I, to my knowledge, but to us he does it plenty. He does it in spurts. He won't bite almost all day long, and then out of no where, he will bite you ten times in just as many minutes. Most of the time is when he is tired and/or hungry, but then others it is completely out of the blue.

But most of all, I especially love how much of a ham he is. He will mind his own business all day long but the second I bring out the camera, he is crawling all over me and posing with giant smiles. I don't know what he thinks it is, but he loves to get his picture taken. He also loves to perform for others. If he can get the attention of anyone in the room, he will go on and on showing all his tricks. All his super screams, tell all kinds of jokes (he will babble on for a while and pause, and then start laughing like he just told a joke), flailing his arms about which is completely exhausting just to watch, blowing spit bubbles, and the sort.

He's just too cute.