6 months!

Dear baby girl,

Today you are six months old. SIX MONTHS. Half a year! Let's pause for a moment while I shake my head in disbelief.

I don't even know where to begin telling you all the ways you make our lives wonderful. In fact, I've started this post several times already and erased what I had written. My thoughts are all jumbled today. So much has happened in the last month. Where do I start?

Six months is my favorite age so far, hands down (didn't I say that last month, too?). You are so fun, so sweet, so smart, so energetic.

Your smile lights up your entire face. It starts first in your eyes. They get a little twinkle in them, and then crinkle up around the edges. Your eyes are eternally amused by what you see. Your eyes smile. Your eyes laugh. Then the smile jumps to the corners of your mouth and tickles them upward, first one side, then the other. And once your eyes are twinkling and your mouth is open and grinning, the smile erupts across your face, exploding through your cheeks, until every muscle in your face is engaged, dancing, singing in euphoria. Your smile lights up the entire world.

Okay, enough poetry about your smile. Let's talk about what you're like as a six-month-old (SIX MONTHS!!). Happy. The first word that comes to mind when I want to describe you is happy. You are discovering more and more of the world, and you are gaining the ability to interact with it more and more adeptly, and this delights you to no end. You love picking things up, studying them, turning them this way and that, and then sticking them straight into your mouth. Pretty much everything goes into your mouth these days. Partly because you're teething (you can see two little white lines just about to break through the surface of your gums--exciting stuff!), but also because putting something into your mouth is just another way of exploring it, of learning about how it tastes and what it feels like.

Since we're on the subject of things that go into your mouth, let's talk solids! That's right, baby girl, you now eat real food. Grown-up food. We were in no rush to start you on solids, but in the last month you became more and more aware of us eating. Then you started staring us down like a ravenous wolf. Seriously. The most intense stares ever. You mastered sitting independently way early. You were old enough to stop nursing when you got full. All signs pointed to ready, so one day at the park, I let you suck/lick/gum on an apple I was eating. You went crazy! Every time I pulled it back you squealed and reached out for it. After that the gates were opened and we let you try bananas and avocado. So far avocado has been your favorite, and only a week into solids for dinner, you eat an entire 1/4 of an avocado by yourself. You love it! You have also tried sweet potatoes (started off kind of iffy, but you like them more every time you try them) and mango (we just tried that one last night--you weren't a big fan). Next on the menu: squash! Yum! We also started giving your a little oatmeal in the mornings now, so you are officially up to two meals a day.

I love the fact that you are eating real food. Love it. But a part of me was a little sad the day you got your first taste of avocado. That signaled the end of an era, the era of you getting all of your nutrition just from me. For five and a half months, you subsisted on only the milk I gave you, and you grew into a healthy, thriving, happy, chubby, gorgeous little girl. What an amazing thing we were able to do. I officially made it to my "super happy with myself" goal of breastfeeding you for six months (with no plans to wean any time soon!), and I am so, so, so incredibly thankful we had the time that we had together.

You do all kinds of funny things now. You are experimenting with the tone and pitch of your voice. You go from loud squeals to deep laughs, from fake coughing to repeating your favorite syllable, "da." When you get mad at us, you scold us, saying, "DA-DA-DA" with an indignant look and tone of voice. You are sitting unassisted like a rockstar, rolling both directions, and you already know the word "kitty." You LOVE our two cats, and when we say, "Ali, where's the kitty?" you look wildly around the floor until you find one of them, and then you break into a big smile. Speaking of rolling, I had just about come to peace with the fact that you weren't going to be a very big roller. You were closing in on six months and not only hadn't rolled from back to belly yet, but have never really shown any interest in rolling belly to back once you mastered it. Then a couple of nights ago, your dad heard you crying over the monitor, and when he looked at the screen, lo and behold, you were on your stomach, holding yourself up, and looking around in sleepy frustration and bewilderment. You had rolled onto your stomach in your sleep! Now you roll back to tummy with ease (it really is incredible how quickly you learn something once it clicks), and you are a tummy sleeper. It kind of makes me nervous because you tend to face-plant straight down into the mattress. But I guess now that you are growing up there are going to be lots of things that make me nervous and I'm just going to have to hold my breath and trust you.

You have always been energetic, but now that you have more control over your limbs and are capable of doing more with them, it is exciting to see just how energetic you are. You twist and turn and look at everything in sight. You are rarely content to just sit still--you want to explore! I know that mobility is right around the corner for you, and while I'm so excited to see you grow and learn new things, part of me is relishing this last bit of immobility. I know that once you can get around on your own, we are going to have our hands so very full!!

Perhaps my favorite new thing that you have learned is the ability to give kisses. After you nurse, I always pick you up and kiss your sweet rosy cheeks. I say, "kisses!" and then smooch one cheek, and then "kisses!" and smooch the other. Back and forth. "Kisses!"-smooch-"kisses!"-smooch-"kisses!"-smooch, and so on. Well one day, you turned and planted your big, wet, open mouth right on my cheek. I thought it might have been a fluke (remember, you put everything in your mouth these days!), so I gave you kisses again, and after about four, you leaned in and planted another big, wet, open-mouthed kiss right on my cheek. I thought my heart would burst. Now after you nurse and I pick you up, you are often the first of the two of us to go in for kisses. I love love LOVE your sweet baby kisses.

You are gorgeous. And sweet. And energetic. And funny. And easy going. And loving. You are the baby I would have built if I could have picked out every individual trait separately. I have no idea how I got so incredibly lucky, and you should know that I am thankful for every single second.

Happy six months to my sweet baby girl,
Mom