William is 8 months old today! As of this morning, he weighs 18.8lbs and is about 28 1/4" long with a head circumference of 173/4". More and more lately he is starting to seem like a little person, rather than a helpless baby. He is more social than ever and has made significant inroads on his apprehensiveness around strangers. I am able to hand him off and he will now tolerate (though not necessarily enjoy) just about anyone. He especially loves women as he is fascinated with long hair. If you happen to have long hair, he is your new best friend! Other hair-like things are also interesting, such as yarn and grass. Any and all hair captures his fancy.His latest social skill is learning to communicate non-verbally. If he wants to be held, he will tap your leg or arm, and indicates his desire to be picked up by raising his arms as you approach him. He also recently got a new, big boy car seat, and once the straps are unbuckled, he will push himself out of the seat, and raise his arms out to be lifted up. Both Michael and I think this is really cute. I'm sure that sentiment wont last long.
He is making all kinds of new sounds lately. Vowels, consonants, raspberries, gurgling and shrieking are all part of the repertoire. He has said 'dadadada' (though not in reference to anyone) and even something that sounded suspiciously like 'mom' the other day. These are not true words, just random sounds, but it still excites me. You can just look at him and know that he has something to say. Whenever it is that he does finally figure out how to speak, he will likely be a non-stop chatter box.
He recently got his second tooth on the bottom gum, and is using it to eat chunks of foods, in addition to purees. We started with very thin purees, worked our way up to thicker and thicker mixtures (his favorite is butternut squash), and eventually chunks. We often feed him bits from our plate such as banana, rice, potatoes, yogurt, beans, mushrooms, onions, etc. At first he was not so sure about these chunks and often spit them out or made a gagging sound as he swallowed them (which really freaked me out!), but he has been getting better and better at handling them. Now he eagerly opens his mouth for whatever we offer him. He even tried Indian food the other night and loved it. He is one adventurous eater! 
He is getting more physical and is closer than ever to crawling. He pushes himself up onto his hands and moves his legs back and forth. He dives from the sitting position, onto his tummy, and can very quickly roll from his back to his stomach (and sometimes the other way too). Frankly I am trying to discourage this behavior as I am not ready for him to be ambulatory yet! His other new skill is playing with new kinds of toys. His favorite is this one where you push on a button and a door pops up. He hasn't really figured out how to open the doors quite yet, but he loves to shut them once they are open. So I have spent many an hour pushing the buttons and watching him shut the doors. Its pretty cute to see how determined he is to close all of the doors as quickly as possible!
In conclusion, I will leave you with this little ditty created by Michael. The background is that every time we change William's diaper, we put this diaper cream on him, to prevent diaper rash. The cream comes in stick form, and is yellow, and kind of looks like butter. So as Michael was changing a poopy diaper tonight, I overheard him singing this song to Will:
We butter your butt, yes we do
We do it after you poo
We use this to butter your ass
and then you go pass gas
We butter your ass, oh yes!
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