Artemis started crawling over the weekend. It didn’t happen all at once, of course. She has been working up to crawling over the last couple of weeks. She would get up on her hands and knees and then try to lean forward. Then she learned to make little hops. Then she started to put one hand in front of the other. And then finally she learned how to coordinate hand, hand, knee, knee, hand, hand, knee, knee.

I have taken to setting up a little track for her on the bed that serves as an auxiliary couch in our living room (a common arrangement in China). I line the perimeter with pillows to discourage her from going over the side. I put toys at the head of the bed and move her down to the foot. Every time she reaches her destination, I pick her up and move her back down to the bottom. Artemis doesn’t mind at all, in fact she giggles. Maybe we should have named her Sisyphus.

Our capable girl has also learned how to get herself into a sitting position from her belly, but not reliably. She has done it twice (once on camera in front of grandma and grandpa, which was a hoot) but more often she just falls over. Give her a few days and she will master that important skill, too.

And I haven’t even mentioned the first tooth, which made an appearance on Thursday, peaking up from the middle of her lower gums.

I love having an eight-month-old. Every day she can do something she couldn’t do before. It’s amazing to watch her learn.

I wrote this post in the morning, but decided to wait before publishing it. Now it is one o’clock in the afternoon and it is already out of date. She no longer stops just at sitting - she is now able to pull herself onto her feet and stand by herself while holding her crib railing.

Did I mention that I love having an eight-month-old?