As I write this, Aidan only has another 48 hours to 7 months old. Around 9:30 on Sunday night the little guy will be 8 months old. Time flies.

Some days if feels like yesterday that he was curled up in a little 8 pound ball on my chest sleeping peacefully. Other times it feels like years ago that we took that early morning drive through a snow storm to meet him for the first time. No matter how small a box we keep him in at night though, he keeps getting bigger.

I don't see Aidan in the morning most weekdays. He and mommy are off just about the time I wake up so I have to wait until I come home from work to see him. His pictures are plastered over my office walls and on the desktop of my computer but I never realize how much I miss him everyday until I come home and see him smile at me. He's often in the foulest of moods when I get him. Its close to his bed time and he's cranky so I have to play the clown just to keep him from whining but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

I feel like this 8 month birthday is a little different from the others. We're not just marking it by how much he's grown or some new reaction he has to us. Its as if this birthday marks a real transition. He's not a little baby anymore. He's no longer satisfied with a smiling parent or a finger to gnaw on. He needs to explore and with his new found mobility he's doing it.

I would not be surprised one bit if, in the next 4 weeks, I had to write a post about how Aidan walked on his own for the first time. He's standing now. Not just one of those, I-prop-him-up-and-he-wobbles-while-hanging-onto-a-table-for-10-seconds-before-falling kind of stands. Nope, he's standing himself up and quickly.Truthfully, he doesn't need much help from stationary objects either, he just doesn't know that yet. He's also walking around his crib and pack'n'play. Its only a matter of time before he realizes he doesn't have to crawl everywhere.

I thought I would be a little sad at this transition. Our little baby isn't there anymore. He's being replaced by our little boy. But, I'm not sad. I'm excited. He's more fun everyday. He's showing interest in things that's a little deeper than before. He investigates new objects and systematically destroys them. He still laughs at the same tricks but now he anticipates them. If I count to three and toss him in the air, by the third time he's giggling before I get to two. That little brain in there is working and we have to fill it. I can't wait.

Aidan has recently proclaimed himself interior decorator at Chez Walker. This would be fine would it not be for his lack of focus. Like his nana, he excels at demolition but comes up short on reconstruction.  Very shortly after this picture was snapped, he decided my organizational skills are crap and all of those DVDs needed reorganization. Predictably, once the DVDs were in a pile around him, he found something he wanted to put in his mouth and split leaving mommy to clean up.

For those that haven't seen him in a while, this is how we frequently see Aidan now. Generally this pose is accompanied by screaming and head shaking. I was lucky here to catch him before he freaked out. It seems like we only had a good sleeper for a month. He went from waking up in the middle of the night, every night, to going down easy and sleeping til morning.  Now he's added a new wrinkle…bloody blue murder.

It goes something like this, he rubs his eyes and and does every other "I'm tired and about to blow" warning signal in the book. We bring him upstairs and distract him with toys while we change his diaper. he seems content as we attach his pacifier and ready for sleep. Then we lower him onto a hot frying pan. At least, that's what's you'd surmise by the screaming. He rolls, sits, crawls, stands, and otherwise defies sleep for about 15 minutes. Jaime spends the entire 15 minutes writhing in her seat while I need to be reminded that its time to check on him. He's down to one check now through which he screams without breathing. Shortly after we close that door he realizes that we, in fact, aren't kidding and he really isn't get out of the crib right now and he falls asleep.

Once Aidan showed mommy and daddy that he could pull himself up without them we had to change some of his sleeping arrangements. The mobile he loves so much had to come down before he turned it into a trapeze. His mattress pad which was at a nice, comfortable, mommy daddy height had to be lowered. I had visions of him side hopping the rail and wreaking havoc whilst we slept in ignorant bliss. Now his mattress is lowered all the way down. We thought that was the fix since, to this point, he's only stood up when he could grab something horizontal. 

Shortly after we put him down tonight we heard some pretty standard "I don't think I want to be up here" screaming. When Jaime opened his door she found him standing in the crib, holding the vertical bars and chanting "Attica!" Clearly this means the only option is to chain him down. I'll stop at Home Depot on the way home tomorrow. 

Doctors and other fancy specialists will advise you to avoid cladding your baby in shoes until he can walk. Clearly, they've never tried to keep socks on a crawling child. We purchased Aidan's first pair of sneakers not to protect his feet, not to complete the outfit, not even to raise him to the height required to get him on Superman The Escape at Six Flags. We bought him sneakers to keep his socks on. Anyone who has or has raised a baby knows keeping socks on a baby is a little like trying to stick two magnets together face to face. You might get them together for a short while with great effort but its a losing battle. The forces of nature will conspire to eject those cotton bear traps from the cute little piggies you tried so desperately to encase.

Aidan now has 3/4 of a tooth spread out over two teeth. I'd take pictures but since he sprouted teeth, his tongue is now wired to his lips and jaw. Open his mouth and the tongue springs out to cover the teeth. His lower left tooth is in the lead and probably about halfway up while the lower right is just now making an appearance. He's no longer allowed to chew on daddy's finger because its not cute or funny when daddy bleeds. Really.

He's progressing alarming well on the crawling thing. A week ago he rocked on hands and knees, today he's almost crawling but successfully inch-worming. He takes steps with his hands until he's on his belly then waits for his legs to catch up. He'd be on it faster if it weren't for the fact that he's trying to walk. Instead of being content on his knees, he plants his feet and raises his but in the air as if about to stand before something in his head says "Wait, this isn't right…or is it?" 

The house in the early stages of "Nerfing". This is the process by which all dangerous, heavy, unstable, interesting, fun, shiny, desirable, small, large, valuable, breakable, useful items in the house are locked away, stored, or trapped inside of drawers latched with impossibly awkward plastic levers. All sharp corners are being padded and every item that can toppled is being secured to a wall. We used to have such a nice house.