Ready, set . . .

Today Tobin is eight months old. He weighs about 22.5 pounds. He is delightful, bright, curious, and beautiful (I mean handsome, Tobin, in case you read this some day). And--look out world--he's almost independently mobile. This is my current favorite photo of him:Tobin has achieved all fours. He was close over the holidays but never could stay up consistently. It's now commonplace for us to find him after a nap in his crib rocking back and forth on his knees. He hasn't put it together yet that this will ultimately provide him a means of propulsion. I say that because instead of moving his knees to crawl, he attempts to move by diving forward with both hands, collapsing two of the legs of what is known in yoga as "table position." The visual effect of this is a non-moving kind of headfirst slide into an imaginary base. Imagine if you had to do "Pete Rose" in charades and you'll get the idea.

Despite his inability to crawl, he moves around much more than ever before. I can leave him on a pallet on the floor for as little as 10 seconds to grab something, and when I return he will have scooted, rolled, or levitated [hey, if I'm not there to see it, who knows?] to the other side of the pallet or to plant his cherubic face in the abrasive pile of our dingy carpet.

His all-fours position also seems to have further convinced Hannah that he is in fact a strange looking and sadly uncoordinated dog. She treats him nicely and tries to get him to play, but I wonder if she's frustrated with the rate of his development (after all, most puppies are nearly house-trained by eight months). One thing that we've had to look out for is her attempts to, erm, "dominate" him. If you've owned a dog, you can probably guess what I mean. There is a thing that dogs do to other dogs to establish their supremacy . . . and I'll stop there. Besides that, she is great with him. She makes him laugh more consistently than either of his parents. He lights up when she sprints from room to room or chews on her stuffed rabbit. I'm really excited to see him crawl around after her. But I'm excited to see him do pretty much anything he does every day.