Lately, while nursing, Drew stops, looks up at me with a tiny grin and waves. Or claps. Or waves and claps. In those moments, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or feel slightly embarrassed because, really? When your kid can wave and clap at you, maybe it’s time to stop nursing.

I think that dichotomy sums up exactly where we are right now. On the cusp of One, Drew is a little bit of this, a little bit of that. He’s still a baby, but the boy is starting to emerge. In one moment he’s curled into me, nuzzled into the valley where my shoulder meets my neck, warm breath breathing in, out. “My baby,” I murmur. In another moment he’s grabbing at the cable box, and I’m looming behind him saying “NO!” practicing my sternest Mom voice. His response is to turn to me, raise his eyebrows and grin, an adorably frightening preview of the mischievous boy to come.

The rubber bands are still around his wrists, but not as tightly so. Last night in the bath, watching him lift his ducky in and out of the water I realized he had a shoulder. A real, discernable shoulder. Crawling had left its mark, carving out definition between shoulder, bicep and elbow on an arm that had previously been mistaken for that of the Michelin Man. Is it crazy to say that this realization hurt? As if he had somehow been growing behind my back, without my permission. It was a small reminder that his days are no longer passed by laying in one spot, staring contentedly around a room. These days, he invades any room you place him in, confidently and curiously crawling wherever his inquiring mind wants to go.

He doesn’t have words yet; he is still young for that. But it hit me that he can now understand many of the words I say to him. “Drew, can you wave?” I ask and one arm jerks back and forth in a clumsy greeting. “How about clap?” I coax. Fat little hands bang into each other, sometimes missing the mark, but each day the motion becomes more refined. He practices his newfound skills at all hours and odd times: clapping first thing in the morning when I place him, still sleepy, on his changing table; in his crib, before he crashes face-down onto his mattress, exhausted from all the new things he’s learning, seeing, experiencing; waving from his stroller as we walk around town. He waves at strangers, airplanes, gardeners. Sometimes I think he’s waving to nobody, and then I see a garbage can, a dog or a bus. In his mind, all are worthy recipients of his greeting.

He can’t tell me what a cow says. But when I ask him he pauses, his eyes dance and his mouth breaks into an expectant, gaping smile. He knows what comes next and he can’t wait to laugh at the sound. “Moooo” and “tweet tweet” and “quack quack” are words I never thought I’d take such delight in saying. One day, maybe sooner than I’d like, he’ll say them to me. And my eyes will dance and my mouth will curve into a smile and tears will prick my eyes, full of pride, sadness, awe and bittersweet God-knows-what.

The crazy thing about baby ages, like Three Months, Six Months, etc. is that they seem to coincide with actual, observable developmental milestones. When a baby rolls over right around five months, you can say ‘See, I told you he was five months!’ This doesn’t work so well with adults. I’ll be 29 next week, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to tell except for maybe noticing (and then kindly pretending you didn’t) all the white hairs that have sprouted near my temples and the few extra lines that have settled in around my eyes. I turned 29 and all I got was this lousy hangover!

Today Drew is Seven Months, and in the past few days I’ve noted a few milestones to mark the occasion. They are not necessarily earth-shattering, but I’d like to record them for posterity so that when friends with younger babies ask me, ‘At seven months, did Drew…’ I can actually answer them because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that mommy’s memory is shot to hell.

First, Drew is sleeping through the night (and now probably won’t since I proclaimed it to the world). Now, I don’t mean the clinical definition of sleeping through the night—five consecutive hours my ass, 7p.m. till midnight DOES NOT COUNT! He’s down around 7p.m., and doesn’t stir until after 6a.m.. I can actually lay down in bed at night and switch off the light without worrying about when the dreaded middle-of-the-night-fusswhinecry-alarm will go off.

Naps have also taken a significant turn, I guess as a result of all the quality sleep he’s getting at night. Where once I could count on a two-hour stretch or two each day, now Drew sleeps in 45-minute increments. As soon as he falls asleep, it’s as though someone hovering in front of me has slapped a red button and yelled, “GO!” I race around the house trying to tackle all the chores I want to accomplish. I cram food down my mouth, run up and down the stairs with laundry, prep food in the kitchen, pay bills, etc. etc. When all that’s done I try to sit still long enough to get through one chapter of my studying. And just as I’ve settled in, I hear a faint ‘whaaaa’ from the monitor. Pencils down!

And then there’s the tooth. A first tooth! I’m excited yet fearful. What will become of my nipples?! TMI? The very tip of one bottom tooth is just poking through his gumline, and it’s a little funny to watch how he’s handling it. And by handling, I mean shoving every available object into his mouth with wild abandon. Yesterday he managed to cram Curious George’s foot and Sophie the Giraffe’s neck into his tiny milkhole and I swear he was eyeing up the laptop cord, too. The kid can gnaw with some ferocity!

We’re in a new phase, again, and all I can do is try to keep up.

“The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout…”  I’m murmuring this song for Drew’s benefit as I wheel a shopping cart through the grocery store. Each time we go through this exercise I think of Jodi Picoult’s House Rules. In the novel, an autistic boy can only be soothed by Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff.  His mother has been singing it since he was a baby, and even now that he’s eighteen years old and over six feet tall and by all physical accounts a man, continues to do so when he has one of his episodes.  I hope I’m not singing Itsy Bitsy Spider to Drew when he’s sixteen and fails his first driver’s test. Maybe I should start singing I Shot The Sheriff; at least it wouldn’t be so embarrassing for the both of us. But still. It works every time. Drew instantly transforms from cranky, whiny baby to smiley, happy, in-on-a-secret baby.

There are all these little things. These little glimpses of the personality that is slowly forming, one that seems to add up to a silly, slightly mischievious, happy-go-lucky kid. “This Little Piggy” makes him break into a giant, gaping-mouthed grin. Sniffing his armpits and exclaiming “P.U.!” earns belly laughs. I just hope we’re not starting some sort of complex.  Is he going to grow up thinking he’s got stinky pits that no deodorant can vanquish? Whatever. At this stage, it’s all about earning a smile or a laugh.

He loves his jumperoo, but mostly when there’s company.  When it’s just him and me he politely bounces up and down, I think just enough to appease me.  If someone else is here, he jumps so hard I worry the whole contraption will fall off the door frame. His face is pure joy, all “can you see what I can do?!”

Ladies love him and he seems to love them right back. When a woman exclaims over him or coos at him, he turns his head  and flashes a sidelong coquettish grin. He has an eyebrow raise that can stop people dead. The brows shoot up quickly and his eyes flash mischieviously.

He’s trying out his vocal chords and he’s learning that the louder the sound, the more attention he gets. Today at my exercise class he started squealing and when I went over to see what was wrong he simply stopped, looked at me and smiled his gummy grin. He seemed proud of himself, like, “See that, Mom? I got your attention!” While the other babies parked next to him slept away, Drew kept trying out different high-pitched sounds, ending each one with a grin. The fitness instructor came over asking if he was ok, and while I told her he was just trying out his voice she quietly wheeled the other babies out of earshot.  And there he sat, one baby, all alone, squealing away with his glinty, know-it-all eyes.