I Can't Believe He Eight the Whole Thing

Damian's eighth month was a blur for both Hoang and me - such a blur, in fact, that here I am writing about it nearly 2 weeks after it was "in the books." This month was sort of a crossover at work with our jobs - just as Hoang starts slowing down, I start ramping up. That said, we're certainly not ignoring our little boy! In fact, even with dual tuner TiVos and DirecTV, I can state with absolute certainty that our free "Damian Channel" is far more entertaining than anything else we could watch.

As with many boys, he was a little slow to pick up on a lot of the physical milestones but he's now fully capable of... well, of being darn cute. Oh - and sitting and getting around via his own special hybrid roll/crawl. He put quite a scare into Mama T one day when she left him on the floor for all of 45 seconds only to return to a missing Bubby. In that short time he had roll/crawled across the room and under the bed where he was grinning ear to ear. (As you'll see, those dimples have remained.)

Some other things that make him smile are: the Johnny Jump-Up (no kid loves it more than he does), me poking my nose to his plump belly cracks him up every time, and annoyingly, he seems to take extreme pleasure in yelling out at 4AM every so often just to get one of us up and into his room. Then he laughs at us for being stupid. Yup, that's my son alright.

All in all it was a somewhat uneventful month - nothing out of the ordinary. He ate a bunch of new foods (no teeth yet), he took his first trips to the grocery store and while he's still trying out new sounds, still no word as far as we can tell. (Learning English and Vietnamese at the same time is tough on a baby.)

I'm the one who went through some growth this month - I left my family for 4 days when I went out to Los Angeles. When he's 8 years old, maybe I'll beg for those trips at work. But at 8 months? I missed him (and Hoang) every minute.

Enjoy the pics! (As always, in chronological order accompanied with my witty banter.)

It was cold in August for a spell in CT and as a random aside, his sweatshirt has a "busy beaver" on it...

And that appears to be a busy beaver on the TV. Actually, this was just an excuse to add a Hoang picture - a "no make-up Hoang picture" to boot.

I swear that dimple is going to swallow him up some day.

Hello and goodbye spacebaby. Have a nice flight.

Once in space, you will experience feelings of euphoria

You will be prone to spasms of laughter and squeals of delight.

Upon returning to earth, you will now appear gigantic when placed on your mother's lap.

Boy, he really IS a busy beaver - now helping us shop at the grocery store. (He never uses a pacifier so it's odd that he has one in here.)

I love his little "Crocodile Hunter" shirt...

"Crocodile Hunter?!" he said, "Why are you scaring me papa?!"

The half-crawl, half cheesy highschool portrait handclasp pose.

The no-crawl, all cheesy wannabe model pose pose

Boy that looks like a big tree, Bubby. Why, it's the biggest tree in Connecticut!

Nerd hair. (Him, not me.)

We went to Elizabeth Park in Hartford and grooved to some great live jazz on a perfect Sunday afternoon in September. It was one of those, "This is what it's all about" moments you have from time to time. (And also one of those Damian-drooling moments, as you can see if you look closely.)

See what I mean? THIS is what it's all about (for me anyway...)

...Ok, THIS is what it's all about too. Dallass losing their first game and TO being upset. I plopped Damian down in front of the Cowboy loss and began explaining to him why we take such joy in these things.

"But TO scored a TD."

But the Cowboys still lost!

So I went out to LA for a few days and had asked Hoang to send me some pictures of Damian since I was missing him. Man, let me tell you - when I opened up the first picture she sent and saw this... it made my day. In fact, it still does.

Continue on to Nine Months!

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