As you can see from the long (and growing) list of photo pages on the left (of course), we've added a round-up of Reid's smiling faces as he approaches nine months, a baby's palindromic milestone. Today happens to be Reid's dad's birthday, so I'm celebrating it by posting these photos. Enjoy.

Like the subtle infiltration of Spring that has settled in all around us, Reid's sixth tooth appeared one afternoon. Breaking through on the bottom, it left us stunned, having fairly comported our life around the five-tooth format. His mouth looks like this:
__UU__
VVVVVV

The top two are long and thick, and well spaced, which bodes ill for his orthodontic future, methinks. On the bottom, the center pair are pretty long, having been around a while. Reid has been using them for a while for one of his most enjoyable (and slobbery) games, known around the house as "Hold Something In My Mouth While Drooling Immensely and Thrusting My Chin Out Proudly" or HSIMMWDITMCOP for short. He has also begun using the whole set for carefully biting through a Cheerio just before accidentally adhering both halves to his cheek with spit.

Speaking of Cheerios, Reid's eating has been making outstanding progress. In addition to a wide repertoire of pureed fruit and vegetables from jars, he eats Cheerios, very small pieces of bread, peas, frozen chunks of butternut squash and sweet potato and rice cakes. Rice cakes, incidentally, still taste terrible, and though they are available in a wide variety of flavors, we are currently purchasing only one for Reid. The flavor, which was previously known as "plain" is now called "salt free." In fact, the only ingredient in the "salt-free" rice cakes is rice. Therefore, calling them "salt-free" is just as legitimate as calling them "beef-free" or "squid-free."

Anyhow, Reid's eating method is interesting, because he has a definite grasp (haha) of the critical developmental milestone of exercising his fingers in a pincer motion. He spies a Cheerio on the unprotected battlefield of his Chicco Mamma high chair and his left hand (which we suspect will be the dominant one) creeps up on it, index finger extended. The pointer lands on the Cheerio ("Death from above! Airborne!") and closes to the rest of the hand in a deadly pincer grasp. Now the Cheerio is somewhere in his little, spitty fist.

Things are spotty from here on in. Sometimes, the target Cheerio was too close to his oatey companions, and all of them are swept up in the raid. This is bad for two reasons: 1) the non-target Cheerios are more likely to end up stuck in a salivary prison somewhere on Reid's face, and 2) there is a slightly increased chance of a choking hazard if he gets a half-dozen Cheerios in his mouth at once and they decide to team up against their oppressor. Frequently, Reid teaches them a lesson with the medieval torture chamber known as "The Six Teeth of Doom." Other times, he eats them without a blink. Still other times, they somehow escape his mouth (this happens quite frequently, actually) and they hide in his clothing and bib. We are frequently amazed at how much food has missed his mouth, face and even the bib, only to nestle in the chair, clothes and limbs of our son.

Of course, the Cheerios think they've escaped, but they don't realize (and yes, I recognize that I am anthropomorphisizing breakfast food) until it's too late how we keep Reid's world so clean. Our cocker spaniel reaps a long-overdue reward earned from months of neglect as the humans she previously considered hers doted on this little shouting creature: whatever survives this gauntlet is sent groundward, and the dog makes short work of it, Cheerios, bananas, peas and everything else.

It's strange how each new phase in Reid's life becomes the instant definition of normal for us. If Reid decided that he was going to sleep from 6 until 8, then get up and listen to techno loudly from 8 until 10, and then return to sleep until 6 am, we would just sort of rearrange ourselves around this new schedule. We'd sit quietly and take in some TV or read a magazine until 8, and then, when he got up and started shouting, we would switch on the techno and put in earplugs while he danced, and then wander back in and turn it off at 10, to settle him down to sleep.

So life now has settled into its current incarnation of normal. Reid and K come home at 5:30, and after K changes into pajamas, I come home and we feed Reid, right around 6. Generally speaking, we need to change a diaper at this point. Then it's back down stairs for some playing on the carpet with toys or whatnot, until around 7:30. Then we head upstairs again, perhaps for a bath or perhaps just a little warm washcloth action, and then a final bottle, a toothbrushing (five teeth, and each of them brushed clean, thank you), and then to bed by eight.

When little new bumps crop up, it's strange how quickly they are integrated. Reid has fallen head over heels for Cheerios. The official food of new-eaters, apparently, Cheerios are lusted after mightily in our house morning, noon and night. At breakfast-time, Reid sits in a little chair playing by himself while his mom or I enjoy a bowl of cereal ourselves. The other day, he was being cranky and shouty, and trying to get up (despite firmly being firmly clipped in). Then I watched his eyes and realized that he was focusing on the box of Cheerios on the table next to the bowl I had just poured. I plucked two from my bowl before adding milk and held them in front of Reid.

His tiny hands reached out, eyes wide. He has a modified pincer action that he uses sometimes, where he makes a fist and then extends the index finger and thumb, roughly in an "L." Still his fine motor control is a baby's, so his hand generally slack and tightens, sending Cheerios out of the hand, or secretly scooping them up so even Reid can't find the Cheerio he thought was between his thumb and forefinger. He brings his hand to his mouth, and holds it before him like a giant perusing his quarry. Then he lifts his head over his hand, like Homer Simpson, and about fifty percent of the time, gets the Cheerio in his mouth. The rest of the time it is stuck to his chin or cheek, or carelessly deposited on his bib, unbeknownst to him.

Sometimes, he even appears to use his teeth. (This is strictly unintentional. He chomps down on the Cheerio just as it is plotting an escape and as a result, it doesn't land on his tongue but instead in the vicinity of one of his five little incisors. The consequences are a satisfying little crunch that brings a surprised half-smile to my boy's face.

Morning all. It's been a bit, as we've once again spent our weekends with friends and family, and the weeks in between too exhausted to do much besides laundry and work. I've also got a new job, and spent a week between old and new hanging with Reid and trying to relax, but ending up doing a lot of other stuff instead.

Reid's development is amusing and stop-starty. He has a fifth tooth, and confounding the experts who claimed that any additional teeth would be on top, he brought it in on the bottom, right next to the first two down there, which are now quite long and sharp.

He has tons of favorite activities, and just when we settle into enjoying one, another pops up on the horizon. While bathtime is still fun, it has been slightly overtaken by Reid's frightening urge to lean forward and walk his hands up the opposite side of the tub into a horrifying, naked-baby standing up position. You're sitting there, playing with frogs or ducks or what-have-you, when suddenly your flashing to an image of little heads banging onto tub-edges, all while staring into this little grin because Reid doesn't care at all that he's endangering his life. He loves standing up! Standing up is tremendous fun! Stand up!

The fifth tooth was spotted last night at dinner. We have begun experimenting with non-mushy foods, such as rice cakes, bananas and the like (still no Cheerios or raisins, because K and I have a pathological fear of baby-choking). Rice cakes dissolve almost immediately upon impact with a drooly little mouth, plus Reid likes eating something we may eat. It's a win-win.

But I looked down at Reid while eating a grownup dinner and was certain that he had a little bit of rice cake left in there. He has been known to store a bit of banana from supper at 6:30 until bedtime at 8, when he miraculously produces it while you're putting him into his crib. It's as if he is willing to try anything once to get out of going to bed.

So I assumed that the white thing next to his two front bottom teeth was another food surprise. Imagine, then, my shock when I found that it wasn't going anywhere, that it was actually a little tooth, which had broken through the gumline and was marching forward to join its partners in crime.

Reid uses his teeth in three major ways right now. Despite our introduction of semi-solid foods, eating is none of them. I honestly question the evolutionary value of having baby's teeth come in from the front first, because no baby is tearing flesh with his new incisors. No, babies in ancient times were breastfeeding and not much else. Today, babies are still breastfeeding (though Reid is drinking formula) and eating soft, mushy foodstuffs. In neither case are the incisors really coming in that handy. How are they coming in handy? Like I said, three ways:

1. Biting his parents.

2. Biting himself.

3. Inexplicably clamping down on toys and then thrusting his chin outward, doing a baby version of a proud strut (in his exersaucer) with his quarry firmly locked in his five, tiny teeth. (Photo to come.)

So that's the newest hobby, really. The clamping. He seems happy enough with it, though we all know it will be gone and replaced by something more amusing and beguiling shortly. Each week, and sometimes each day, he takes on a new behavior. In other ways, it feels like nothing is changing. He loves to stand, in the tub or out, but he hasn't made much progress toward walking. He still hates to be on his stomach, and instead of making babysteps toward crawling he prefers to arch his back and shout angrily about being on his belly. This behavior hasn't changed for weeks either.

And really, I think that a baby's life is like that. Little shifts, like a glacier's slow march south, happen before your eyes, and you barely notice. Yet it's always just a great big mountain of ice, so how much could it change?