Tadej is growing so fast! Next week he will be 8 months old and his skills are rapidly accumulating. I find myself realizing in the moment that this is a new skill for him that he didn’t have last week. It seems as though a switch just flipped on a few things.

A couple of weeks ago he was kind of sort of sitting up, kind of army crawling around and not vocalizing as much as now. But boom, full on crawling, pulling himself up everywhere, sitting up like a pro on his own and as long as he would like, and singing along with the radio in his way in the car. He yells at us when he has opinions and this boy has strong opinions. He understands more and more. I say to him, “ok, let’s go!” and he crawls right to me.

One of his latest things is an uptick in handholding and I love every second of it. There are mornings when I hear him stirring and I am not quite ready to be full on so I pad down to his room and just crawl into his bed with him. If he is still sleepy enough he will roll right into me and put his little hand in mine before falling back to sleep. We both get to snooze and cuddle. Sometimes now when he is falling asleep for a nap I see a little hand reach behind himself searching for my hand. If I hold that little hand, his restlessness becomes contentment and he falls right back to sleep. He gets a bottle right before bed each night so that he is nice and full for the sleeping time and now, when I feed him his bottle, he holds onto the hand holding the bottle and he is quite content. So am I. I find that this moment right before his bedtime is one of my favorite moments of the day…holding hands with my son as he falls asleep and I cuddle him.

I find myself in each of these handholding moments telling myself not to forget. Remember this. Hold on to this. I know that there will be times when he doesn’t want to hold my hand all the time and there will be periods in life when he won’t want to cuddle immediately following a nap so I keep saying to myself, don’t let this cuddle go unnoticed. I try to be fully present in these sweet moments. I find myself even as he is playing midday and I am on my phone or my computer having a moment of…he is growing to fast, put it all away and just enjoy. I am delighting in him crawling all over me as we play.

Remember this. Remember this. Remember this.

I have all sorts of intentions of writing down the stories of his life. I need to go back and write about his birth days in our little journal for him but I also want to remember every moment. I want to be present while it is all happening. This means some of that slips but which is more important?

I hope I never forget his little hand in mine, exploring my hand and leaning in.