Eight Month Old Baby Quotes

He looked nearly inconspicuous, a handsome man in faded Levi’s and tennis shoes. A Yankees baseball cap covered his dark hair, the bill shadowing his features. Casual. Beautiful. A day’s growth of beard on his jaw did little to detract from his excruciating attractiveness. “She’s eight months old, but she knows how to flirt,” the baby’s mother said. “Let go of the nice man’s shirt, Gabbi.” She dislodged the child’s hand, then told Adrian, “I’m sorry. She must like the colors on your T-shirt.” Eight-month-old Gabbi’s big blue eyes were fixed on Adrian’s face, not on his T-shirt. Billie released a shaky breath. Good God. Even babies weren’t immune.

I don’t want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I’m not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies.” She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. “You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No—nine. Poetic justice.

Did you seriously think for one moment,” she said, sounding fierce now, “that I would let this little baby, who has been given into our care, be taken away by three strangers on the strength of a single piece of paper? Three men who practically forced their way into this holy building without any invitation? Who frightened the oldest and the least well of us with threats and weapons—yes, weapons—waving your guns in her face? Who do you think you are? What do you think this place is? The sisters have been giving care and hospitality here for eight hundred years. Think what that means. Am I going to abandon all our holy obligations because three bullies in uniform come shouldering their way in and try to frighten us? And for a helpless baby not six months old? Now go. Get out and don’t come back.

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry. It worked. Mum saved me. The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it. While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant.3 This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby….Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy….I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?…I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight….I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back….If I could get a garage I would take it.”4 When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development required tenants with no children to put down a $150 security deposit but charged families with children a $450 deposit plus a monthly surcharge of $50 per child.5 In 1980, HUD commissioned a nationwide study to assess the magnitude of the problem and found that only 1 in 4 rental units was available to families without restrictions.6 Eight years later, Congress finally outlawed housing discrimination against children and families, but as Pam found out, the practice remained widespread.7 Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.8

I was here. I was fine. It was a beautiful day, and I was around people who gave me more love and happiness in a month than I’d had for seventeen years. I would never have to see those jerks again. And today was going to be a good day, damn it. So I got it together and finally looked back down at my best friend to ask, “Did I tell you I stole a bottle of Visine once because I wanted to put a few drops into my dad’s coffee, but I always chickened out?” Lenny snickered. “No. Psycho. Did I tell you that one time I asked Santa to bring my mom back?” I made a face. “That’s sad, Lenny.” I blinked. “I pretty much did the same thing.” “Uh-huh.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Did I ever tell you that I wanted to have like ten kids when I was younger?” The laugh that came out of her wasn’t as strong as it usually was, but I was glad she let it out anyway. It sounded just like her, loud and direct and so full of happiness it was literally infectious. “Ten? Jesus, why?” I wrinkled my nose at her. “It sounded like a good number.” The scoff that came out of her right then was a little louder. “You’re fucking nuts, Luna. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-ten?” “That’s what ten means.” I grinned at her. “I said that was back when I was younger, not any time recently. I can’t afford ten kids.” “Still. How about… none?” I glanced down the table again when I heard Thea’s sharp laugh. “Okay, Only Child.” I laughed. “I think four’s a good number now.” My friend beside me groaned before reaching forward to grab a chip, dipping it into the tiny bowl of guacamole beside it. “Look, Grandpa Gus was basically my brother, my dad, my uncle, and my grandpa all rolled into one, and I had a bunch of kids to play with,” she claimed. “Whatever makes you happy, but I think I’m fine with zero kids in my future.” I reached over and grabbed one of the pieces of fajita from her plate and plopped it into my mouth. “Watch, you’ll end up with two,” I told her, covering my mouth while I chewed the meat. “You’ve already got that ‘mom’ vibe going on better than anyone I know.” That had her rolling her eyes, but she didn’t argue that she didn’t, because we both knew it was true. She was a twenty-seven-year-old who dealt with full-grown man babies daily. She had it down. I was friends with my coworkers. Lenny was a babysitter for the ones she was surrounded with regularly. “Like you’re one to talk, bish,” she threw out in a grumpy voice that said she knew she couldn’t deny it. She had a point there. She picked up a piece of fajita and tossed it into her mouth before mumbling, “For the record, you should probably get started on lucky number four soon. You aren’t getting any younger.” I rolled my eyes, still chewing. “Bish.” “Bish.

No-knock entries are dangerous for everyone involved—cops, suspects, bystanders. The raids usually occur before dawn; the residents are usually asleep, and then disoriented by the sudden intrusion. There is no warning, and sleepy residents may not always understand that the men breaking down their door are police. At the same time, police procedures allow terribly little room for error. Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces sergeant and SWAT trainer, says that he teaches cops to “Look at hands. If there’s a weapon in their hands during a dynamic entry, it does not matter what that weapon is doing. If there’s a weapon in their hands, that person dies. It’s automatic.” On September 13, 2000, the DEA, FBI, and local police conducted a series of raids throughout Modesto, California. By the end of the day, they had shot and killed an eleven-year-old boy, Alberto Sepulveda, as he was lying facedown on the floor with his arms outstretched, as ordered by police. In January 2011, police in Farmington, Massachusetts similarly shot Eurie Stamp, a sixty-eight-year-old grandfather, as he lay motionless on the floor according to police instructions. In the course of a May 2014 raid in Cornelia, Georgia, a flash-bang grenade landed in the crib of a nineteen-month-old infant. The explosion blew a hole in the face and chest of Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Baby Bou Bou”), covering his body with third degree burns, and exposing part of his ribcage. No guns or drugs were found in the house, and no arrests were made. Sometimes these raids go wrong before they even begin. Walter and Rose Martin, a perfectly innocent couple, both in their eighties, had their home raided by New York Police more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. It turned out that their address had been entered as the default in the police database.

Three-and-a-half-month-old infants already seem to exhibit the other-race effect. In a study at the University of Kentucky, white babies were very good at distinguishing faces with 100 percent Caucasian features from faces that had been graphically morphed to include features that were 70 percent white and 30 percent Asian. They couldn’t do the reverse: They could not tell 100 percent Asian faces from those that were morphed to include 30 percent white features. In other words, they could detect small differences between white and not-quite-white faces, but not the same kinds of differences between Asian and not-quite-Asian faces. Lawrence A. Hirschfeld of the University of Michigan did some of the pioneering work on how early in life children begin to understand race. He showed children of ages three, four, and seven, a picture of “Johnny:” a chubby black boy in a police uniform, complete with whistle and toy gun. He then showed them pictures of adults who shared two of Johnny’s three main traits of race, body build, and uniform. Prof. Hirschfeld prepared all combinations—policemen who were fat but were white, thin black policemen, etc.—and asked the children which was Johnny’s daddy or which was Johnny all grown up. Even the three-year-olds were significantly more likely to choose the black man rather than the fat man or the policeman. They knew that weight and occupation can change but race is permanent. In 1996, after 15 years of studying children and race, Prof. Hirschfeld concluded: “Our minds seem to be organized in a way that makes thinking racially—thinking that the human world can be segmented into discrete racial populations—an almost automatic part of our mental repertoire.” When white preschoolers are shown racially ambiguous faces that look angry, they tend to say they are faces of blacks, but categorize happy faces as white. “These filters through which people see the world are present very early,” explained Andrew Baron of Harvard. Phyllis Katz, then a professor at the University of Colorado, studied young children for their first six years. At age three, she showed them photographs of other children and asked them whom they would like to have as friends. Eighty-six percent of white children chose photographs of white children. At age five and six, she gave children pictures of people and told them to sort them into two piles by any criteria they liked. Sixty-eight percent sorted by race and only 16 by sex. Of her entire six-year study Prof. Katz said, “I think it is fair to say that at no point in the study did the children exhibit the Rousseau type of color-blindness that many adults expect.

George: How many numbers you got? Erin Brockovich: Oh, I got numbers comin' outta my ears. For instance: ten. George: Ten? Erin Brockovich: Yeah. That's how many months old my baby girl is. George: You got a little girl? Erin Brockovich: Yeah. Yeah, sexy, huh? How 'bout this for a number? Six. That's how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I've been married - and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That's my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I'm guessing zero is the number of times you're gonna call it.

My niece, Anna, told about a poignant moment with her eight-year-old daughter. I love myself but I hate my thighs. I do. I also hate my post-baby, three-times-C-sectioned tummy. No matter how many planks, sit-ups, or miles I run, it will never be like it was when I was in college. And that makes me sad, frustrated, and sometimes angry. When my sweet husband tells me I look beautiful, instead of just thanking him, I answer back with a caveat: “Thanks, but I look fat.” I do this in front of my kids sometimes without realizing it. My boys always come back with, “No way, Mom. You look awesome” or “We think you’re beautiful!” But my daughter is just quiet. Watching. Listening. Later she’ll come up to me, hug me, and whisper, “I love you so much, Mommy.” A couple of months ago, when she was all dressed up, I saw her looking at herself in the mirror. I stopped and said, “Lillian, you look absolutely stunning!” She turned around and said to me very matter of fact, “No I don’t. I look fat.” I gasped! Doesn’t she know how precious she is? Doesn’t she know how beautiful she is? What a blessing she is? Doesn’t she know what a miracle her very existence is? And then I remembered all the times I answered her dad with the very same words. I was sad, ashamed, and most of all heartbroken. Lillian was eight years old. She understood that “fat” was how I felt about myself, so she decided she should feel that way too. Lillian and I had a long talk that day. I told her what a blessing her life is, and how God made her special, unique, and beautiful. I also apologized to her, my two sons, and my husband for not loving myself like I should. Lately, I’ve been saying “thank you” when I get compliments—something new to me—and it’s made all the difference. Now when I tell Lillian how gorgeous she is (which is all the time), she looks at me with her bright hazel eyes and says, “Thanks, Mommy! I think you’re really beautiful too!

Sample One-Day Menu for Your Eight- to Twelve-Month-Old

Sample One-Day Menu for Your Eight- to Twelve-Month-Old 1 cup = 8 ounces (240 ml) 4 ounces = 120 ml 6 ounces = 180 ml BREAKFAST ¼–½ cup cereal, or mashed or scrambled egg ¼–½ cup fruit, diced (if your child is self-feeding) 4–6 ounces breast milk or formula SNACK 4–6 ounces breast milk, formula, or water ¼ cup diced cheese or cooked vegetables LUNCH ¼–½ cup yogurt or cottage cheese or meat ¼–½ cup yellow or orange vegetables 4–6 ounces breast milk SNACK 1 whole-grain cracker or teething biscuit ¼ cup yogurt or diced (if child is self-feeding) fruit water DINNER ¼ cup diced poultry, meat, or tofu ¼–½ cup green vegetables ¼ cup whole-grain pasta, rice, or potato ¼ cup diced or mashed fruit 4–6 ounces breast milk/formula BEFORE BEDTIME 6–8 ounces breast milk, formula, or water (If breast milk, follow with water or brush teeth afterward.)

Melinda, what are you doing?” he asked, unzipping his jeans to take them off and take a shower of his own. “Nothing,” she said, averting her eyes. He frowned and stepped toward her. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Were you covering up? In front of me?” he asked, astonished. “Jack, I’m going to pot,” she said, cinching the towel tighter. “What?” he asked, laughter in his voice. “What are you talking about?” She took a deep breath. “My boobs are drooping, my butt fell into my thighs, I have a potbelly, and if that’s not bad enough, I’m so covered with stretch marks, I look like a deflated balloon.” She put a hand against his rock-hard chest. “You’re eight years older than I am and you’re in perfect shape.” He started to laugh. “I thought you were trying to cover a tattoo or something. Mel, I didn’t have two children, a year apart. Emma’s only a few months old. Give yourself a little time, huh?” “I can’t help it. I miss my old body.” “Oh-oh,” he said, putting his arms around her. “If you’re thinking like that, I’m not doing my job.” “But it’s true,” she said, laying her head against the soft mat of hair on his chest. “Mel, you are more beautiful every day. I love your body.” “It’s not what it was…” “Hmm. But it’s better,” he said. He tugged at the towel and she hung on. “Come on,” he said. She let go and he pulled it away. “Ah,” he said, smiling down at her. “This body is amazing to me—incredible. More lush and irresistible every day.” “You can’t mean that,” she said. “But I do.” He leaned down and touched her lips with his, one hand on her breast, the other moving smoothly down her back and over her bottom. “This body has given me so much—I worship this body.” He lifted her breast slightly. “Look,” he said. “I can’t bear it,” she complained. “Look, Mel. Look in the mirror. Sometimes when I see you like this, uncovered, I can’t breathe. Every small change just makes you better, more delicious to me. You can’t think I’d have anything but complete admiration for the body that gave me my children. You give me so much pleasure, sometimes I think I might be losing my mind. Baby, you’re perfect.” “I’m twenty pounds heavier than when you met me,” she said. He laughed at her. “What are you now? A size four?” “You don’t know anything. It’s much more than a four. We’re headed for double digits…” “God above,” he said. “Twenty more pounds for me to gobble up.” “What if I just keep getting fatter and fatter?” “Will you still be in there? Because it’s you I love. I love your body, Mel, because it’s you. You understand that, right?” “But…” “If I had an accident that blew my legs off, would you stop loving me, wanting me?” “Of course not! That’s not the same thing!” “We’re not our bodies. We’ve been lucky with our bodies, but we’re more than that.” “It was my butt in a pair of jeans that got your attention….” “My love for you is a lot deeper than that, and you know it. However—” he grinned “—you still knock me out in those jeans. If you’ve gained twenty pounds, it went to all the right places.” “I’m thinking—tummy tuck,” she said. “What nonsense,” he said, leaning down to cover her mouth in a bold and serious kiss.

The Connecticut River March 2, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees “My theory,” said Eben, “is that being a captive is an honor for the strong and the uncomplaining.” Sarah and Mercy considered this. “Then why is Ruth alive? She complains all day long,” said Sarah. “But she isn’t sobbing,” Mercy pointed out, “and she isn’t actually complaining. She’s calling them names. She attacked her own Indian this afternoon, did you see? She was going to stab him with his own knife.” They giggled. It was scary to watch Ruth, and impossible not to. Instead of a blow to the head, though, Ruth was usually given food. It wasn’t a method anybody else wanted to try. “But Eliza doesn’t fit your theory, Eben,” said Mercy. “She hasn’t spoken since they killed Andrew. If you let go her arm, she stops walking. Yet they’re patient with her.” “I admit Eliza isn’t brave,” said Eben. “She’s in a stupor. Maybe they respect her for caring about her husband so deeply.” Mercy had never liked thinking about Eliza marrying an Indian. But what was her own future now? Would she, would Sarah, would Ruth, end up marrying an Indian? The image of Ruth Catlin agreeing to obey an Indian as her lawfully wedded husband made Mercy laugh. “And they let Sally Burt live,” Sarah went on, “and she’s about to give birth right on the trail. They’re letting her husband walk with her, and he’s the only one they let do that.” Sally’s courage was inspiring. Eight months pregnant, big as a horse, and she bounded along like a twelve-year-old boy. She had even taken part in the snowball fight. “I’m having this baby,” she had said when Mercy complimented her. “It’s my first baby, I know it’s going to be a boy, I know he’ll be strong and healthy, and I know I will be a good mother. That’s that.” In Mercy’s opinion, Sally Burt was holding her husband up and not the other way around. If she could be half as brave as Sally Burt, she would be satisfied.

Here’s something you can try at home if you are eight months pregnant or if you have a baby younger than 5 months old. If the infant has already arrived, place him on his back. Then gently lift up both of his legs, or both of his arms, and let them drop back to the bed of their own weight. His arms will usually fling out from the sides of his body, thumbs flexed, palms up, with a startled look on his face. This is called the Moro reflex.

Ultimately, they found that for babies younger than six months, there’s a three-to-one ratio—they can differentiate between four and twelve; for six-month-olds there’s a two-to-one ratio (babies can differentiate between eight and sixteen or between sixteen and thirty-two); and with nine-montholds, it’s a smaller ratio—differences of eight and twelve. Spelke

Gloria told Maria the whole story of her adoption by the time she was seven years old. She had adopted Maria after breaking up with a man---a fellow graduate student she would only ever refer to as H---who had wanted her to stand behind him at protests, and type up his dissertation, and serve him dinner and wash the dishes and bear him some children and write her own dissertation in between folding laundry. He'd seemed attracted to her in direct proportion to how well she disappeared into their backdrop. Gloria was in her midthirties then and just beginning her graduate program. She knew there were many black babies languishing in the system, unwanted. She put in a request for a healthy black infant girl. It was only a few months before she got a call from the agency saying they had one available. The baby was only a few weeks old and her name was Maria. She came from the Cane River in Louisiana. They didn't have much more information than that except that she was in the care of a Catholic orphanage now----the Saint Ann's Infant and Maternity Home in Maryland. Gloria dropped everything and drove eight hours to collect her child.