Our sweet little sugarbeet is eight months old now. It's so strange to think that he's spent as much time outside of the womb as he did inside. It seems like the pregnancy was of shorter duration than the past eight months. He's gone through so many changes that it's astounding it's the same person! He's sitting up just fine on his own now, and moving on to eating a wider variety and greater quantity of solid foods. I love watching him discover new things he can do, and him wanting to do them constantly so he gets the muscle memory down pat. Whether it's a facial expression, sitting, grasping small things like a single strand of hair between his thumb and forefinger, or jumping in his exersaucer, he's all about the repetition. He has his favorite toys and ones he won't play with unless they are the only things in reach. The first one to hand is always an empty water bottle. Perfect for chewing on the cap, using like a club to beat his other toys or daddy with, what else does a baby need? He's still not crawling, but we're actually pretty damn grateful for that right now. We don't have any railings up yet around the sunken area of our dining room, so that really limits where we can put him down once he's on his own power. We haven't done it yet mostly because we're still trying to figure out what, exactly, to do. The clock is ticking on that one, though, so it's time, past time really, to put some serious thought and research into that problem.

    We've been working on painting the deck, and I think all the hard work is really going to pay off on that score. It used to be a dark brown that was good at not showing dirt. But it hasn't been standing up to the elements and has been peeling for over a year. We chose to paint it a redwood color, as close to a stain color as possible with it still being paint. Why not just stain it? Because we'd have to scrape off all the old paint to do that. No thanks. This is a big enough job without adding to it. We've done enough home improvement projects now that our house is really becoming a much more agreeable place. Not that it wasn't before, but if things don't work out for us to get a job in a different office and we stay here, we won't be uncomfortable in our home.  We've been enjoying beautiful weather, and spending quite a bit of time out on our deck. Beet is all about outdoor time. We went camping for just a night last week and he thought it was the greatest thing since jarred peas. I haven't seen him that interested in things ever. He was having such a good time, in fact, that he refused to go to sleep until we did at 9:30. His usual bedtime is 7. We could forgive him not liking sailing, or the beach, but it might have been awfully hard to be okay with him not liking camping. That's just too much of a joy for both me and Steve.

    Steve has recently been talking alot about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Since that usually takes a few months to do all at once, that's not something we could do in its entirety until he retires at 57. I don't know that either of us are going to be up to hiking 2600 miles when we're 57, but it's a nice goal. I guess only time will tell.