Good morning, world.

Dawson's developemental update:

One day you'll walk into your baby's room and find that little person standing up, grinning at you. Many 8-month-olds are strong enough to pull themselves onto their feet and stay there by holding on to you or a piece of furniture. A somewhat comical aspect of this wonderful development is that some babies know how to get up -- but not back down again. They will stand and stand as long as they can hold on, and finally either tumble down or cry to be "rescued."

Dawson has been very good at pulling up for about a month now. It's entertaining to watch him. Even though he has almost no volcabulary at this point in time, his facial expressions speak a thousand words! He pulls up on the entertainment center, and then lets go with one hand, pivots around to make eye contact with David or I, and then giggles. He's adorable. He is capable of walking along the edge of our furniture, and thinks it's much more fun to hang on outside his walker than to be in it these days. He's an avid crawler, but prefers to be upright the majority of the time. He crawls if necessary, but it's definately not his preference.

The latest adventure we have choosen to take is trying to teach Dawson sign language. It may take a month of siging before he catches on, but I know it will be worth it. At the moment I want to stress just a few signs like milk, eat, more, and pain. Once he gets the hang of these I'll try to introduce more signs. Since babies generally do not develop a verbal vocabulary for a while it will assist him in directing us to his wants and needs. We shall see how this goes, but I think he will catch on.

I'm going to try to update his pictures later today.

So many things, so little time!

God Bless,

Lori