JuJuBee

Month Sixteen

Dear Baby Toddler Girl,

You have become walker. An official Please Leave Me Alone While I Am Carrying Out This Very Important Task of Walking Completely Unassisted Without Assistance of Any Kind Walker. I'd rather hoped that you might wait another couple of months. I thought maybe you could wake up around Halloween time and just decide to walk then. Right before the baby. You had other plans. That's ok! I think some members of the family might have been worried that you were still not walking, so we at least set their minds at ease. I love nothing more than to see you walk toward me with your cup in one hand and your much loved (and might I say getting a bit worn looking by the minute) strand of plastic pearls in the other. You carry a sense of pride when you walk. I remember when your brother learned to walk. He had, and still has, a cool confident air about him so that when he learns new things you would never know if he was proud or not...everything sort of just was what is was with him. If he was excited about walking, you didn't know it. You on the other hand? I can see in your eyes that you have been holding this special trick in your pocket for awhile and just waiting for the right moment to share it with us. You are proud and we are proud of you.

I keep telling myself that this...THIS is my favorite age. You are able to let us know when you are unhappy and we can usually figure out the problem within seconds. This doesn't happen much. You are such a happy child. Some might mistake your strong will for being upset or stubborn or difficult. I know better. I am your mother and I know that you are a determined little person with very strong opinions of how you think the world should be run. Once you accept that your way is not the only way...you will be fully equipped to run our country just as well, if not better than, our current leader.

The last one and a half years have been full of ups and downs. The one constant positive in our lives is knowing that we have done a good job with our children. You and your brother make me more proud than anything else I have ever done. They say that you should not live solely for your children or let your life revolve around them. That you need to keep a piece for yourself. This is true. One day you will grow up and possibly have children of your own. I want you to take these words with you. As much as you might try to be the complete opposite of your mother (which is your god-given right as a female...we'll discuss other perks later) I want you to learn one thing from me. Be good to yourself. If you are happy, your family will be happy. If you are content and healthy, so will they be. If you are stressed, on edge, sad and mean? You can bet that your family will feel the same emotions. Don't do this to yourself, and don't do it to the people you love. Make time for you to be happy. Make time for you to be secure. You will need it. Being a mom is so unbelievably hard but so unbelievably worth it.

You jumped from the 25th percentile for height and weight way up to 50th this month. You still love to eat and will put anything in your mouth and chew it up and swallow. This is quite foreign to me since your big brother has all of three favorite foods that are allowed to pass his lips. You talk all day long and even put two words together the other day as the cat walked out of the room and you yelled, "KITTY GO??!!" Even the cat stopped in her tracks and backed up to look at me like, "Did the child just say what I think she said?" and I was all, "Hot damn, I think she did!". My little Einstein. Maybe all of those DVDs are paying off!

You are slowly but surely growing some hair. We tease that you have a mullet since most of the hair you have is concentrated at the base of the back of your head. You can't defend yourself, so we do it. I promise that when you get older we will be more sensitive about making fun of you. By then we will have another child to make fun of. It's the circle of life.

You are pointing out shapes to me...star, circle, square. You know your belly, eyes, nose, hair, ears, mouth, toes, hands and a gazillion other words that we aren't even aware that you know. You kiss and hug and give cuddles (mostly to the cat and your blanket, but whatever, baby steps). You are a precious little person who is more social than I have ever dreamed of being. Your brother's hour and a half soccer practice is spent entertaining all of the other parents while you flirt and bat your lashes. One mom especially gets your undivided attention with hugs and pats on her leg. I sometime feel bad that we don't watch our kids actually play the sport we shelled out lots of cash for, but you are just so damn cute.

I'm trying to get you ready for your role as Big Sister in the next couple of months but I don't know that you will have trouble. I know that I worry about your baby brother's safety, as you can be a bit rough sometimes, but I think that you will adapt to your new life as middle child (DUN dun dunnnn) with ease. I hope. I really, really hope. Please, please adapt easily. Please? Thanks.

Here's to you for making it to 1.5 years without a hitch. If you need a hug to get you through that next tooth, or that inevitable bump on your head from walking straight into the wall when you are up past bedtime? Come and get it. My arms are always open for you. I love you, Bootser Bootsie Boo.

Love, Mommy

Month Fifteen

Dear Bootsie Baby Boo,

I'm not sure where the name "Boots" came from. It most certainly did not originate from a monkey-type character you might find on D0ra The Expl0rer, mostly because your big brother wouldn't allow that show to be broadcast in our home. I think one day Mommy put some booties on your tiny newborn feet and Daddy called you "Bootsie Boo". Since then we have called you every form of the word ever since. You answer to all of them. More often than not we call you Boots or Bootsie in favor of the longer name "Madeline" because we are a lazy people. I'm beginning to think you might be a tad bit lazy as well. Evidence of this can be found while watching you move throughout the house. Mainly you move on your hands and knees. Sometimes, if the mood strikes you, you will use your feet. Walking is not something that you have much interest in, even now in your 15th month.

Yesterday you were making the rounds in the kitchen holding onto my hand. You will walk holding onto just one of my hands if I force you to and you look as though you could at any second just let go and run. I think you would if you hadn't inherited the Lazy McLazerson gene from both your father and I. Grandma thought we could just buy you a trusty pair of Stride Rite Frankenstein shoes for added ankle support and that would be that. One month later and you are still not having it. Honestly? I kinda like your immobility. I am in no hurry. The only thing I do ask is that you walk before the next baby comes along so that I am not forced to carry two of you around. I could do without that, so really...you've got a little time. You did stand for a moment all by yourself two days ago until you realized that I was not holding your hand and then you promptly put your butt on the floor and gave me a dirty "how dare you" look. I don't blame you. How dare I.

You've begun to learn and say and do so many things recently that I have to stop and pinch myself when I still try and imagine you as that tiny little helpless being. You are such a little girl lately, something that I thought might not happen. Where you used to squirm and act as though I was tearing your limbs from your body by attempting a hug, you now will give in and embrace me. Even if for only a minute or two, those are the best two minutes of my day. It fills my heart and soul with so much joy when you press your little lips to mine and make a kiss sound. I feel like you gave me all of the gold and diamonds and sunshine in the world when you put your head on my shoulder before I lay you in your crib each night. I love this new cuddly phase, as fleeting and stingy as it may be.

You are talking! Like a real actual little person! Your current favorite word, (replacing "light") is "Uh Oh". You say UH OH anytime you or anyone in a five mile radius drops anything or even looks like they might think about dropping anything. You say UH OH if you happen to wander into a room where something might be laying on the floor and you know damn well that it was not on the floor a few minutes ago...clearly it had been dropped and was in dire need of an UH OH. You say UH OH when the cat jumps from the chair to the floor. Sometimes you say just to hear yourself say it. It's the sweetest noise I have heard in a very long time.

You say "Thank you" anytime someone hands you something, especially food and you say "Bless you" when someone sneezes. The two sound exactly the same to the untrained ear. Thank god my ears are trained to you. You say lots of things that only you and I know about. They are our little secret and I promise I won't tell. As long as you keep talking to me. Never stop talking to me. Please.

You are working on tooth number TWELVE and so help me if that tooth doesn't break through soon I might jump from the highest building in town, which incidentally, I believe to be a tower within walking distance from our house, so keep that in mind. Stupid tooth!

You continue to amaze me each and every day and I love nothing more than when your Daddy comes home in the evening so that I have someone to share the miracle I know as YOU. I love having someone else be able to watch as you walk along the couch and grab the remote and point it at the TV and change your brother's channel. I love having someone else get to see your chubby dimpled thighs and fat little feet move across the floor chasing after the cat. Someone to understand that when I say that your hair is definitely growing, they can see it too. Even if it's just one hair...Daddy sees it too. He understands. He loves you as much as I do and that is a whole lotta love, Little Girl. You will never know any different.

Tomorrow we find out if you will be having a little brother or sister and that just floors me. YOU are going to be the BIG sister. I almost feel guilty that you had such a short time in the spotlight as our "baby". You will always be my first little girl, maybe my only little girl, and you will always mean so much to  me. I hope for you to never have to feel the "middle child" syndrome and we will do all that we can to make you feel special and loved. You are special and loved. You will be such a great big sister. You will also never have to be the one to wear the hand-me-down clothes!! Yay!

Happy Fifteen Months, Pumpkin. Now please go to sleep, it's way past your bedtime.

Month Thirteen

Dear Jekyll (or is it Hyde?),

What changes you have gone through this past month. I left you for one week while Daddy, your brother and I went on vacation. There will be a time in your future when you see pictures from a trip to Disney World and you will be searching those pictures for your pretty little face and then you will wonder, "Wait. What year was this trip? 2006? I was alive, I know it. SO WHERE THE HELL AM I?" That is when mommy will have to explain to you that taking babies on week long vacations is not fun. It sucks and there was no way I was going to take you along. Sorry. We'll take you when you are older! I promise!

I was so worried about leaving you. I was worried for you because I did not want you to think that we had left you, forever. I was more worried for your grandparents because I know what a handful you can be with your temper and your not wanting to sleep at night. You had just started sleeping through the night the week before and I was fully prepared for you to forget all about that and wake up 4 times a night. Half of me would have felt awful if that had happened and half of me would have felt a bit appreciative that someone else would see what I had been going through for the past 12 months with you.

Of course you were just fine. You didn't miss us one bit and you slept just fine. Mommy thought about you every minute of the day and each time I saw a baby (roughly every 1.3 seconds) my heart would ache for you. I wanted to grab those babies and hug them and smell their little heads. I talked to you every day on the phone and the sound of your breathing was enough to rip my heart out. We got back after you had gone to bed and when you woke up in the morning, you got into bed with us and I had the best 20 minutes of my life just looking at you and remembering every expression and every tiny hair on your head. Then the novelty of your parents wore off and you cried to get down. Touching moment over.

Let's see. We are up to 7 teeth, cruising along the furniture faster than I am really comfortable with, saying "Dada, Mama, Nana, Kit (cat) and ight (light)" You drink from a cup, you are done with formula and drink whole milk, you point to your nose and belly when prompted, you brush your hair, nod your head and bounce up and down to music. There is not a food in existence that you will not eat. You feed yourself entirely independently. I'm waiting for you to potty train yourself and start earning your own salary. Should be any day now.

This time in your life is such fun for us. You make me laugh all day long with your temper and the funny faces you make and the way you hold your baby doll like a mommy. We couldn't imagine life without you. Yesterday your Nana asked me if I remember what life was like before you. I'm sure she expected me to say no but the truth is that YES, of course I remember life before you. It was easy, it was predictable. It was calm and ordinary. Honestly? It was boring. You make life more fun. You've forced me to be a little more patient and a little more easy going. You are making me a better person, day by day and I thank you. I do remember life without you, but I'd much rather concentrate on life WITH you. Happy Thirteen Months, Baby Girl. You make life interesting.

Love,

Mommy xoxo

Month Twelve

My Sweet Girl,

Last night after watching an extremely long and extremely slow movie about gay cowboys, I looked at the clock. 11:02 pm. I turned to your father and asked him what we were doing a year ago at this time. "Well...I'm pretty sure I was making the second round of phone calls to say that we were having a baby." He was indeed correct. The next morning you made the world a better place by being born at 9:39 in the morning. What a beautiful way to start the day. You came into the world with the cord wrapped around your head three times, you were holding it with a death grip. You were three weeks early. You were a drama queen then and you are a drama queen now. I couldn't imagine you any other way.

We planned you. We planned you down to the month, maybe even the week. You see, your Daddy has a certain sort of job that makes it hard for him to be home much during the fall and winter months. We thought that if you arrived sometime in May that he would be able to be home a lot during your first few months of life. I found out that I was pregnant literally immediately after we began trying. It seemed easy and it seemed perfect, and for the most part it was...up until the last trimester when I became a miserable, whiney huge blob of bitchiness. I couldn't sleep, couldn't breathe, couldn't take trips in the car. Even I was ready to divorce me. You father is a saint. I then became dehydrated and had to make a trip to the ER...my second trip to the ER resulted in your birth. You were ready to go and I was ready to have you.

A few days later we ended up back in the hospital. It was Mommy's birthday and I fought back tears as they told me that you would have to spend the night in NICU to have photo therapy. Jaundice. I was not going to leave you there alone. The nurses laughed at me, told me to go home and take advantage of the free babysitting. I recoiled at the thought of getting in the car and sleeping in my comfortable bed while you lay naked in a room filled with tiny sick babies. I sat by your side and while looking at those babies fighting for their lives I vowed never take you for granted. I wanted to gather up each of those tiny little people and take them home to love. Not one of them had a Mama or Daddy sitting next to them and it broke my heart.

Eventually you were cleared for take off and we finally went home to begin our lives as a family of four. Over these past 12 months you have brought joy to each and every person that has met you. You have inherited a temper (from who, I will not say) and it is so funny to watch you throw a toddler sized tantrum when we tell you that "No, you may not eat the kitty food."

You have four beautiful white teeth, almost no gorgeous blonde locks and two amazing big blue eyes. Ten chubby fingers and ten yummy toes. Two parents who would do anything to make you smile and one brother who could not be more proud to have you as his baby sister. The look on his face when he carries you from the kitchen to the livingroom (usually just to keep you away from his crayons) is a look of pure big brother love. Even the cat puts up with you better than we had expected.

We made it through this year. Now you will begin a new journey and you will become a big sister before this time next year. I know that you will teach this next baby all about love and patience and grace. Especially grace...you have a name to live up to you know ;)

Happy Birthday my beautiful daughter. You make me a better person and I love you so much. I'm sorry your head was too big for the sparkly tiara...next year we will look for an adult sized one.

I love you!

Mommy xoxo

Month Eleven

Oh Bootsie Boo,

It would seem as though life is crawling along at an unbearably slow rate these days. Then I stop and realize that you have somehow become 11 (ELEVEN.) months old. I'm not sure if you can understand what that means but tossing around phrases such as "soon to be one year old" are just freaking me out a little. In 30 days you will be joining a new club. An exclusive club. COULD YOU JUST SLOW DOWN FOR A MINUTE?

As I type this, you are sitting next to me in your highchair shoving fistful after fistful (some things never change) of puffy Gerber fruit stars into your mouth. You heard your brother cough in the next room and are having the time of your life mocking him, "Cough. Cough. COUGH. Is anyone listening to me? COUGH!". You love to imitate us and have started to stick your little tongue out when I show you mine. You are becoming so independent in so many tiny ways that I sometimes have to stop and remember that you are still just a baby.

The other night you started rubbing your eyes furiously (a clear sign that you need a nap) around 6 pm. I decided to let you have a little cat nap instead of trying to keep you happy for the next two hours until bedtime. I put you in your crib and that is where you stayed sound asleep for the next 9 and a half hours. In your dress. You fussed a little around 3:30 am, and then slept some more until 7:30. You never cease to amaze me.

Your mobility is moving right along. You are not the most daring child. You approach standing and walking with extreme caution and I can tell that you SO badly would love to just stand at the couch and hang on all by yourself, but if I let go, you cry as though it breaks your little heart to become less dependent on me. I'm here to tell you baby that it's ok. Go ahead and let go. I will always be there to catch you when you fall. The big fear that all parents have is starting to come true. You have discovered the stairs. Dun. Dun. Dun! While you are content right now to just pull yourself up on the bottom stair, I know it will be only a matter of time before you want more. The bottom stair is like the gateway drug to all higher more dangerous stairs.

I will be leaving you for an entire week shorty after your first birthday and I am already beginning to have tiny anxiety attacks about it. Not that I don't think you will have a blast with your Nana but because I know that when I return, you may have a few moments of not remembering quite exactly who I am. I know it will come back quickly, and then you will probably treat me as though I slapped you in the face by leaving, but please know that a part of me will be with you the whole time and I will be thinking of you every moment of every day. I also hope your hair grows a little bit while I am gone, but that is the only change that I am allowing, do you understand, young lady? NO WALKING while I am gone.

One more month to go before you are thrust into the exciting life of a one year old. Let's slow down and take it slow. Let's enjoy every second. Also? We are going to need to really stock up on our sleep for all of the exciting one year old stuff, so let's get to it.

Love,

Mommy

P.S. You finally got that third tooth this month! WooHoo!

Month Ten

Dear Baby Girl,

It's been an interesting month. I would probably look back on your tenth month with loving adoration if I did not have this website to go back and read.  Since I do have this site to go back and read, I will see that your tenth month of life was spent...well....whining and crying mostly.

You've become well acquainted within the last few weeks with your new bestest friend in the whole wide world. That friend's name is Separation Anxiety. You are inseparable and you think that your new friend is the next best thing to sliced bread. This has made life as Mommy knows it a living hell.

I can no longer  do things like walk into another room, think about walking into another room or look at another room without your sensing it and crying at the absurdity of the notion.  You've become an added appendage to my body, affixed to my left hip at all times. I wouldn't be surprised If I began to walk with a slight swagger from the added 20 pounds on my side. This? This is hard. This is a hard phase and it is making Mommy NOT enjoy being a mommy right now. All I can do is try to remember that this will not last forever. That there will be some day in the future when all I want to do is carry you from room to room to room on my hip and glance down at the top of your tiny blonde head.

Your soldier crawl has advanced somewhat as you have begun to supplement the move with actual crawling on your hands and knees. You will go a few beats crawling like a normal person and then fall down on your belly and resume your elbow soldier crawl as if you are in some sort of basic training obstacle course running through our living room with invisible barbed wire fence and enemy flood lights scanning the area over your head. Thank god I refuse to outfit my children in camouflage. Have you seen  the awful pink camo that little girls will wear? I mean they aren't buying it, right? Someone is buying that crap for them.

Hey little girl, you sure do love to eat. Forget baby food. You have no patience for it. You'd rather happily chew on a breadstick, or a stick of string cheese, or a fish stick for crying out loud. One night not long ago, Mommy had ordered take out. There was a cardboard box on the dining room table, sitting pretty close to the edge that contained a variety of grease laden bar food (chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, fries, etc) and as I walked past, with you on my hip (of course) you reached right out with your chubby liitle hand and swiped a potato wedge right out of the box. It was not until maybe 30 seconds later that I looked down and saw that you had already eaten half of the wedge. Your little face and hand shiny with BAR FOOD GREASE.  I was at once horrified and proud of you. 

As for sleeping? Well, lets just say that you sure are CONSISTANT. Ten months now and really still not sleeping through the night. I'd say you sure stick to your guns when you have decided on something, and that can't be a bad thing, right? Right?! You are up usually just once. I had to take the bumper off of your crib as you had begun to untie all of the bows at night and during your nap. Wouldn't you know? That bumper held more purpose than just protecting your little head from banging against the crib rails. It HELD YOUR BINKY IN THE CRIB.  One of my new pastimes is retrieving your binky from the floor beside your crib 100 times before you drift off to sleep. Good times, Sweetie. Good times.

Goals for Month Eleven? More Sleep! More Hair! Less Mobility! Less CRYING!

You can do it!

I Love you, my Little Pun-kin Bootsie Baby Girl.

Mommy xoxo

Month Nine

Where to begin? I was quite excited to mention in this monthly letter that you have begun sleeping through the night, but alas, I cannot. You have decided that sleeping more than 6 hours in a row is a big ole waste or your time. Sleep? Schmeep. What confuses me is that the first night that you slept through, we were visiting at Nana's house and you weren't at home in your comfy crib with your familiar smells and sounds. You were in a playpen. A PLAYPEN.  Then? Then you came home and slept right through the next night! And there was much rejoicing in the JuJu family household! Until the next night when you determined that sleeping all night was for the birds. You have done it maybe 2 nights since. You know what they say about babies...and steps...yes, baby steps. We'll get there, Kiddo. I've resigned myself to the realization that I will not have a good night's sleep again until you begin going to slumber parties. Oh yeah, isn't it about time you make some friends who will have slumber parties?

I'm teaching myself  that expecting you to grow and learn at the exact same rate as your brother is a mistake. Your brother reached each and every milestone as an alarmingly fast pace, and when you were not doing the same things at seven months, eight months and now nine months, I began to worry. Maybe "worry" isn't the right word, but I found myself getting nervous about it. Then reality and common sense return and I think...why in god's name would anyone want their baby to be walking at nine months? You are a brilliant baby and a wonder to your daddy and I. I grew up trying to escape the shadow that my older brother cast over me. I  eventually came to resent being compared to and held to a higher standard that he set and it blew up in everyone's face. I rebelled...I sincerely hope that we will always allow you to be your own person with your own strengths and weaknesses. I want you to challenge yourself but I also want you to reach your goals when it is the right time for you and when you are good and ready.  The only exception to this rule would be the sleeping issue that we seem to have. That one? I'm going to push on you.

The last nine months have gone by at mach speed. I don't know where the time has gone. I am fortunate to be able to experience each day with you and to be able to watch you grow and learn. We are trying to teach you some baby sign language and you are definitely picking up on the sign for more. Each time I say the word and forget to use the sign...you will stare intently at my hands as if to say, "Uhm, Mommy? I think you are forgetting something here?".

Right now you are sitting in your highchair to my left, banging your keys on the tray and saying Dadadadadadada. Your daddy might think that you know what you are saying, but I see when you call the cat Dada and you call the cup Dada and you scream DADA at the television. He's only fooling himself, but we will play along. He deserves that much.

Next month? Double digits, Little Girl! Holy Moly! I love you so much.

Love,

Mommy

Month Eight

Dear Sweet Two Tooth,

You technically turned eight months old the day after Christmas, but our lives are one whirlwind of packing and unpacking the car and driving to and fro that I have not had a moment to sit and write this until now, January 4th. This will certainly not be the last time that I disappoint you with my fierce desire for procrastination. I hope the lazy gene skips right over your little ladder of DNA and if not? What can I say. Sorry.

What a busy month you have had. Sitting here now trying to put into words all of the ways you have changed in the last month proves difficult. You haven't began to walk or talk or even crawl...you (sadly) have not decided to free the rest of your itty bitty teeth from their personal hell inside of your gums, but even though your changes have not been huge milestones, they are plenty. In a million little ways you are growing up before our eyes and becoming a little person.

You have a sweet way of shyly smiling at me when I walk into your room to pick you up from your crib after nap time. You will see me, break into a huge grin and then hide your face as if I have caught you loving me too much. Believe me, you can never love me too much. Please never be embarrassed to show it. I would die a slow painful death if I were to walk into your room and not see that gorgeous two-toothy grin.

I've never met a baby who smiled more than you smile. You smile all day long. You smile at strangers, at your family, at your baby dolls, at the cat, especially at your brother. You smile at the floor, the walls, the molecules of air swirling around your head. Of course when you are not smiling, you are screaming. There is no in between with you. Also? My god can you scream. They say little girls can shriek. You do not shriek. You let out blood curdling screams and I fear that you may have a lucrative career in horror films.

One of your favorite things in the entire universe would be food. Any sort of food. Last week you seemed to be having some "trouble" in the nether regions and so we fed you some baby prunes. Nasty, smelly, disgusting prunes and you ate them up as if I was serving you a treat sent down from the gods above. You will shove fistfuls of  fruit puff stars into your mouth and somehow manage to not choke.  You finally love baby food and I can't get it into your mouth quickly enough. You love juice from a cup, as long as I hold it for you (mommy lazy gene creeping in) and still will fuss and cry from the moment you see your bottle until the moment that it enters your mouth. I mean you see it, right? You know that it is coming to you and yet you still act as though I am going to heat it up and then toss it out the window. 

Sleeping through the night is like...well...I wouldn't know.

You might be saying Dada. Let me rephrase that. You are saying Dada, but I refuse to believe that you know what you are saying. Daddy would disagree with me but that is nothing new now is it? You love your toys, you love to dance, you love to lay on your belly and turn yourself in complete circles with your hands. You are just understanding that in order to crawl, you will need to get up on your knees. I thought you might have figured it out last night, but I'm thinking it will take some more time (lazy gene) before you have the patience for it. I am in no hurry for you to master that one. I rather enjoy your lack of mobility.

I can't stress enough how happy you have made us. How much joy you bring into our lives. I can overlook the sleeping issue as long as you can overlook all of my faults. Someday they will become more apparent to you and I can only hope that you will love me regardless. I am doing my best to raise you to be a strong, smart, independent woman. I've never been so scared of a job in my life. Your daddy and I were discussing how hard it is to be a stay at home mom. It is certainly the most difficult job in the world (you couldn't pay anyone enough money to clean your brother's bathroom as I did yesterday) but as I told your father, the reward at the end of the day is worth all of it. I love you like crazy.

Love,

Mommy

Month Seven

Dearest BabyJuJu,

We are just going to gloss over the whole "you missed my seven month birthday by a billion or so days" issue and get right to the point...damn you are growing fast! So fast that I really have no time to use the bathroom let alone post long and detailed accounts of your newest achievements and pure genius. Obviously you did not get the brains from your Mommy, as I just spelled "genius" as "genuis".

One of my favorite parts of your seven month age is when mommy is sitting at the computer and you are beside me in your swing quietly watching me. It's as though you are studying each pore of my face and each strand of my hair and when I glance over, you smile shyly and hide your face into the side of your seat as though I have embarrassed you by catching you watching me. We do this every few minutes and my heart melts a little each time. I fear the day that you don't fit into your swing anymore. I fear any day that you are bigger because bigger means older and older means...well, Mommy isn't the best with change.

Your "vocabulary" is growing by leaps and bounds. There was a time when the only noise you uttered was an "oohhh,oohhh,oohhh" but those days are over, little lady. You babble nonstop with a glorious string of sounds. Screaming, or squealing rather, is still your noise of choice. You are a little girl of course and little girls squeal. Maybe you could just turn it down a notch?

You were never much of a cuddler but it seems that the older you get, the more you might be willing to put your head on my shoulder or press your cheek against mine as I hold you (standing of course because sitting is an evil, evil position...no,no,no sitting allowed, I got it). You love to "dance" as I found out when we were at your Nana's house and she cranked her music loud with you in her arms and immediately you began to KICK your legs out to the beat with a huge grin on your face. KICK, KICK, KICK!

Food is not your favorite thing. You are stubbornly loyal to your bottle and anytime I come near your face with a spoonful of baby food you will suddenly pull a tiny key from your diaper and lock your lips up tight. You do love the little Gerber stars that melt in your mouth and I love to watch you attempt to shove handfuls into your mouth while a couple may make it in, the rest are either stuck up your nose or plastered into your fist. God help anyone who tries to pry your fists of steel open to save those stars.

Sleep is coming along. I guess. Next subject?

You are such a scooter. I will place you onto the floor on a nice clean pretty blanket and within seconds you have scooched yourself across the room and into a corner where you get stuck and then whine until someone rescues you. It seems to be your goal in life to be somewhere other than where we put you. 

Oh! You are a giggler! While at Nana's house we put you into the tub with your big brother for the very first time and you just laughed your little (huge) head off! I promptly went out and bought a big girl tub seat for home and you just adore the bath tub. I'm not ready for you to adore the bath tub...please slow down with the growing.

You have begun to realize that when we approach your crib, and the shades are drawn, I am indeed going to set you down and walk away.  You are not crazy about this idea. When we see the crib you will tense up, look away from it and grab at my body like I am about to throw you into the ocean. You hold on for dear life until I lay you down, at which point you think, "Eh, maybe this isn't SO awful..." and you will close your eyes and pull the blanket up to your face. I love this about you. Secretly I like to stand beside your crib for longer than necessary just to feel you holding tight to me. Then I remember that I am about to have maybe an hour or two of pure quiet and I break into a panicked run.

You are my little punkin love bug and I am so in awe of you. You make Mommy and Daddy and your big brother and all that come to know you, so happy. Happy Seven Months!!

Love,

Mommy

Don't be sad, Baby

I'm getting to that 7 month post very soon!

Photo courtesy of  The Greatest Aunt