The past eight months have been the craziest, funniest, most tiring, and loveliest time I've had in a long time...

...thanks to this little boy!

Is he really eight months old? REALLY?! Has it been that long?? Yes. He has been eight months old for five days now. Oh my...it is evident in so many ways. He is getting so big and doing so many new things.
Like ALMOST crawling..

For now, he is rolling and scooting his way around the living room getting himself stuck in between and underneath furniture.

...and he stands if he's got something to hold on to...

...he's starting to grab onto things and pull himself up...

He chatters and jibber-jabbers a lot. He says "ba ba ba ba" and "duh duh duh duh" and "guh guh guh guh" and "la la la la" and, my personal favorite, "ma ma ma ma ma".

 He still razzes a lot, but now he'll compete with you...

He started waving on the fourth of July and does it all the time now! He always waves at me while I'm changing his diaper, which is pretty funny.

 Gabriel nods his head too. When he does, it is a full-body gesture--it's so cute!!

Feeding Gabriel used to be a messy and, I'll admit, dreaded task...

At first I thought it was just lack of experience on both our parts. But then I caught my mom feeding Gabriel with a little plastic spoon of Lily's that we somehow ended up with. Ah-HA!! It was the spoon. I had been feeding Gabriel with a flexible silicone spoon. I figured it would be gentler on him and less of a shock since his bottle nipples are silicone too. I was wrong. I switched spoons and viola!! A much cleaner, happier, enjoyable experience for everyone involved!

These pictures are over a month old and feeding has gotten even cleaner since then! But every once in a while I'll still get one of these:

Bottom line? My baby boy is growing up way too fast. He is always trying to do more, see more, say more and eat more. He's got to figure out why that is here and how can he get it over there.

He is always trying to squirm away so he can go explore...

These are mostly all things he has been doing for weeks now which, in baby time, is quite a while. Crawling is just around the corner and walking soon after. The first year goes by to fast! Everything happens so quickly!

His personality comes out more and more every day and I'm pretty sure he is someone I would hang out with even if he wasn't my son. Seriously. Gabriel is the coolest, funniest, cutest little guy I know!