Eight Months Old

Day 245 | Bike Ride Through Kirby Park, originally uploaded by tadnkat.

Yesterday, Mackenzie turned 8 months old.

We did have a major milestone this month, in that Mackenzie all of the sudden finally started crawling. She’s been about double her age in every other metric since birth, except for this crawling business — where she’s been a little – well – lazy. 🙂

But with the explosion of cuteness that crawling brings, I had every intention of shooting a fun 8-months-old photo for my Baby 365 Project. However, I had a long work day, and so did Kat – so all I ended up getting off on Friday was this photo of us walking around the back yard while Kat prepped the diaper bag in the morning.

So today, I aimed to rectify the situation with a bike ride to Kirby Park, with MV in the trailer. All went great – Mackenzie dialed in to maximum cuteness when all of the sudden it started raining. Argh! I literally only got one shot off before we had to pile back into the trailer and go home.

But still – I’m thinking this month should be the biggest game-changer for us, as she’s gone from just-barely-crawling, to crawling-all-over-the-bloody-place-at-high-speed. And she’s standing on her own on occasion for 1-2 seconds at a time, so our guesses are that by this time next month, we’ll have some standing-on-her-own action, with full-on walking by 10 months. Hopefully so!

Day 70 | Mackenzie at the Grand Opening of the New Founding Church of Scientology Building

Kat, Mackenzie & I at the Founding Church of Scientology Opening in Washington, D.C.

Sorry for the out-of-order post, but this past weekend has been just an absolute flurry of activity with the opening of the new Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C..  In addition to being arguably the most important Church of Scientology in the western hemisphere, it also happens to be my local church, so my wife & I have been down there pitching, helping with as many parts of the opening event as we could.   And with the pre-event preps, the opening on Saturday, and all of the post-event flurry over the last 2 days, yes – it’s only now that I’m getting to write about it.

The event itself was outstanding (as you can see above from the ribbon cutting).  Tons of Scientologists and non-Scientologists came in from all over, and I got to reconnect with tons of old friends who hadn’t seen me since we had the baby.   The speakers were great, especially Mr. David Miscavige‘s speech dedicating the building.  He quite concisely stated why the building is so important, but also what’s so important about all of us now making full use of the building to bring solutions & help to the people & politicians of the area.

Mackenzie looking out at passers-by at the Founding Church of Scientology Grand Opening

We of course brought Mackenzie to the event, dressed for warm weather, and strapped to my chest on the BabyBjorn – despite the fact that I was wearing a suit.   She just loved the event.  She insisted on being front-facing and able to see the speakers when the event was happening, and then toured the building with Kat & I.  Out of the 7 massive floors of the new building, she stayed wide-awake for 5 of them, smiling & giggling and meeting approximately 1000 effusive guests along the way.   At 1001 though, she hit “people overload” and just fell straight asleep.

That worked out fine, as Kat & I were then able to tour the rest of the building & meet tons more people who got a chance to see a cute, sleeping baby.   Boy, that new church is big.  But more significant than its size is the sheer number of different areas where it’s set up to help people.  There are training rooms, seminar spaces, places to educate people about human rights and the dangers of drugs, and it just goes on and on.   Lastly, of course, there was the Chapel – where I’m excited to be able to have the naming ceremony for our daughter sometime soon.  Who knows, maybe we can be the first naming ceremony there!

Opening of the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C.