submerge: Eight Months!

Eight months. I can't believe it. While last month V learned how to crawl like a maniac, this month she passed a few emotional milestones. Firstly, she says Mama and means me when she says it, which is awesome. She's been babbling for a while now, saying mama, baba, dada and so on and so forth, but over the last few weeks, she looks in my direction or will make a beeline for me when she says Mama. I heart that milestone.

She also started clapping recently. While we were flying to New Orleans last week, we were bored in the airport and I was videotaping her, and asked her to clap. Much to my surprise, she obliged. I figured it was a fluke, but I asked her to do it again while we were driving around NOLA, and she obliged again. This is maybe the most exciting milestone to date - knowing that she understands a word and has associated an action with it. Needless to say, all I do now is ask her to clap. So, she's mastered the clap, but what she hasn't mastered is timing - she claps while crying, getting her diaper changed...all clapping, all the time!

One other big change this month - we also hired someone to watch V on a part-time basis - 15 hours a week. So far it is amazing. It's so great to have some solid time to devote to work, and I feel like having the sitter makes the time I spend with V better, too, because I don't have one eye on her and one eye on the computer. The first few days with the sitter were kind of tough, mainly because I'm working from home, too, and V could see me and wanted to hang out, and couldn't understand that I wasn't available. Over the last few weeks, though, she's warmed up nicely to our sitter, and no longer seems to care much that I'm there anymore (ouch). We're still ironing out the kinks, but I think that having someone to help watch V during the week is going to make a huge difference for my work/life balance, and I feel lucky that we found someone so great.