Yeah For Milestones!

I’ll admit right here and now that I’m not like most mothers when it comes to milestones. I have always been an ‘I can’t wait until she (fill in the blank)’ kind of mother. Yuuki will be 8 months in only a little under three weeks, and I love watching her reach new milestones.
One of the first displays of independence that Yuuki showed was holding her own bottle. She’s been doing this since about five months, and she’s been holding her own bottle ever since. I can honestly say that I don’t miss holding the bottle for her.

A few weeks ago, she started cutting her first teeth. My husband and I had suspected that she was teething for awhile at the time, and we had just picked up some gel to help with the pain. I had just put the gel on my finger and got it into her mouth. I had put some on her top gum and turned my finger to put some on her bottom when I felt something hard on her bottom gum. I started in surprise and looked down to see the white tip of a tooth sticking out. I tell you in complete honesty that I shrieked in excitement and jumped up and down I was so ecstatic. Now she has the other bottom tooth making its way through, and I’m watching every day to see when they’ll show themselves fully. If I see them even a millimeter taller I’m inwardly shouting in excitement.

Only today, Yuuki pushed herself up on her hands and got her legs under her. She actually stayed up for a few seconds before plopping back on her stomach on the floor. I was so thrilled that she is taking that next step towards crawling. She’s been doing mini-pushups for a month or so now, and occasionally tried to get her legs under her. She’s still going through the ‘trying to crawl but scooting backward instead’ phase, but now she’s finally starting to get the hang of it.

At this point, I don’t feel that I’ll miss when she isn’t mobile. It’s hilarious watching her roll everywhere (which she prefers to trying to crawl at times), and I know that it’s just one more thing about her that I’ll get to enjoy. Once she can walk, ‘look out playground, here we come’. Seriously, pushing her in the infant swing is one of my favorite things in the world. She gets so excited, and she giggles like crazy. I’m so glad that we have a picture of her in the swing with this look of absolute joy on her face. The next challenge the tackle: the slide. She was just confused the first time.

I’m so happy that she’s starting to become independent. If anything, it just proves that she’s our little girl.