letters to my girl: month six and a half.

dear maggie,

i am two weeks late.

i am sort of glad, because these two weeks have been MONUMENTAL for you, and not a little bit so for me as well.

in the last two weeks, you turned a wormy scoot into a full-on crawl.
in the last two weeks, you decided you could do this sitting independently thing and have rocked it ever since.
in the last two weeks, you have learned how to sit up from crawling. next step, i assume, is sitting up from laying down. of course, i can barely do that, but i imagine your abs are significantly more impressive than mine.
in the last two weeks, most astonishingly, you have learned to pull up on furniture and anything stationary (including people!) and have taken your tentative first steps toward cruising along the furniture.

you are extraordinary. when you do something, you do it big.

you love to blow raspberries, try out consonant sounds, and smile all day long. you've started to giggle at me when i laugh at you. it's reciprocal and it's lovely.

you went to the park for the first time.  you LOVE the swings. today, when we played on a swing, you just giggled the whole time. you just seem to take such great joy in it. i so wish we had a yard so you could have your very own.

you are sitting in shopping carts now, beginning to get a little more at ease with strangers, interested in eating anything and everything, and absolutely loving books. 

you're working on more teeth.  you're waking up a lot more at night, sometimes having real trouble going back to sleep. you're eating solids like a champ, learning to turn the spoon over in your mouth to get the last bits of cereal and banana off of the spoon. i'm so impressed by that. 

so far, you really, really like peas, carrots, banana, oatmeal, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and mango.  apples seem to not agree with you that much, though the jury's out on that.  green beans are not your favorite, but i think you might tolerate them with something else. 

at your new pediatrician, you impressed with great growth: you were 18 pounds, 6 ounces and something like 26.5-27 inches long.  90th percentile all around, and your little head was right on target as well. the doctor gave you a clean bill of health and called your weight great, which was happy for me to hear.

your naps are improving, though only sporadically.  you slept an hour and a half in your bed one morning--it was extraordinary. someday you're going to get those naps worked out. i'm so looking forward to that. i think it will happen for reals when you decide to go from 3 naps to 2.

i love you so much, baby girl. you are so much fun. i knew that you would be, but you really are.  you're learning and growing so quickly that i can hardly keep up. i like watching you grow though. it's like watching you blossom and bloom--it's a gift.  some days we have our moments, especially when you're fussy and i don't know why, but i am trying every day to take great joy in you.  it's not very difficult to do.

i can't wait to see you shine some more, mags.  you are wonderful and we are so grateful to have you.  you already are on your own track and on your own path, and i'm astonished and excited.  i can't imagine what the next month will bring.

love,
mommy.