A Month of Discoveries

Well, he's 8 months old.  Can you even believe it?!  I can't!  Ryan was actually sick the day he turned 8 months. He had been running fever for a few days so I decided to take him to the doctor. It just turned out to be a virus, of course. But my reason for telling this is because they weighed him at his visit, and he is now 20 pounds!  He has no teeth yet, but I think the two front ones on the bottom may be working on breaking through soon.
Ryan's past month has been full of discovery after discovery.  He's at the stage of finding and getting into EVERYthing!

Ryan made his first big discovery just a few days after turning 7 months old.  After venturing past his normal crawling zone, he just happened upon Riley's dog food bowl.  There has been no keeping him away ever since!  No matter how many times Billy and I removed him and took him back into the sunroom, Ryan was crawling right back around the corner at full speed to go straight back! I finally caved and let him explore. This time, he approached the bowl very cautiously. He'd crawl a bit closer, stop, and peek his little head around the corner to see if he could spot it.

Once there, he enjoyed raking the food out onto the floor. Amazingly enough, he didn't splash in the water even once. This shocks me because he LOVES splashing in the bath tub. I guess the dog food was way more intruiging!

Then a couple days later he found the stairs. All of a sudden I hear Tyler announce, "Moooooooooooommy! Ryan's climbing the staaaaaaairs." He had only made it to the 2nd step and I pulled him away. About a week later, Ryan made it all the way to the top while Daddy followed along behind to spot him. Lucky for me, our stairs are in a pretty inconspicuous part of our house, so Ryan doesn't locate them on a regular basis.

His most recent discovery was the tissue box....

Can you tell he was having himself a good old time?!

Ryan has also been "cruising" along the furniture for a couple weeks now.  And lately he's even getting brave enough to let go of what he's holding onto in an attempt to stand up all by himself.  He isn't quite coordinated or strong enough to do it just yet, but it doesn't keep him from trying!  (And at this rate, I'm sure it won't take long!)

There really is NO holding this kid down.  He's deteremined to be up and at 'em!  Remember the highly secured seat we transitioned to???  Uh, yeah...

We were eating dinner the other night, I took like 5 steps to the kitchen and back, and found him doing this!
I guess he's getting strapped to the chair now.