Anna

Dear Anna,

Today you are seven months old. That sounds so much older than six months, though of course it’s not really that much older! It’s been quite a day – Mommy’s car has gone over 50,000 miles and we refinanced the house. You had your first breakfast out today – you were so proud to sit in the restaurant high chair like a big girl!

You’ve entirely skipped pureed food. You hate it. (Except peas.) But the pears and peaches you spat out like we were trying to poison you? You love them as little bits of cut up canned pears and peaches. I’m trying to convince myself that nutritionally it’s not much different, since they’re just canned in pear juice. Your favorite foods are now: freeze dried apple bits, puffed rice cereal, bits of canned pears and peaches, diced cooked carrots, and bits of banana. I’m struggling to find other finger foods that are age appropriate – I guess maybe we could retry sweet potatoes and squash cut up instead of mashed.

You are also on the move. You roll, pivot and inch yourself forward. And new as of today: you get all the way up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth. Your big sister did this just days before learning how to crawl, so I bet you’re pretty close. You can sit in the “tripod” pose for a while before you fall over, and you love this new way you can play with your toys.

You still don’t babble. At all. But I’m about 99% sure you’ve signed “milk” a few times – although you don’t do it all that consistently yet. I’m not too worried about the babbling, as you are a very vocal baby and definitely respond to sounds. Actually, I think you’re starting to connect words to people and things. If I ask you where “the big sister” is, you look around until you find Carrie.

Sometimes it seems like you’re growing faster than I can keep up – I just finally got all the 3-6 month clothes out of your dresser and put in the 6-9 month clothes…and some of those are already too small! And we installed your new convertible car seat and put the infant seat away. You love your new seat! Whenever anyone looks at you in your new seat you grin at them like “Look at me! Look how big I am!” Same with the “new” stroller that lets you sit forward and look out at the world instead of just laying there and watching me. You just seem to really be blossoming and loving every minute of becoming a big girl. Seeing how much you enjoy every new thing makes me look forward to all the new things you’ll get to experience in the next few years!

Love, Mommy

Dear Anna,

Today you are six months old. Half a year! Which means we’re halfway to needing to throw a fabulous first birthday party!

Let’s see. In the past month you’ve become quite proficient in the rolling over department. You can roll over both ways, over and over, to get wherever you’d like to go. Combine that with your ability to pivot on your tummy, and inch yourself forward by sheer determination (or luck, I can’t tell which) and not much is out of your reach at this point. You’d spend half the day rolling around on the floor if we didn’t have anywhere else to be.

Speaking of places to be… Officially, you’ve outgrown your infant seat. You still have an inch of shell above your head, though, so we’re researching which seat we’ll be getting for you and not worrying about replacing it today. But I can’t believe you’re already so big. (I don’t know why I can’t believe it, Carolyn stopped fitting in that seat at six months too. I think I just can’t believe you’re six months old already!)

You aren’t babbling yet, but you aaaah and oooh and screech all the time. And you’re starting to play games: if I drape a cloth diaper over your face and say “where’s Anna?” you’ll yank it down and start giggling when I say “peekaboo!”

Solids are…not going well. You seemed to like the avocado well enough, but then rice cereal you just outright rejected. And sweet potatoes were OK for one day but you refused to let us feed you any the next. Actually, it’s the letting us feed you part I think you object to. If I put the spoon on the highchair tray and let you pick it up, you put it right in your mouth and eat the food that’s on it. I don’t know. The butternut square you tried this weekend was apparently tolerable, but you haven’t discovered a love of eating yet. We’re just sort of going slowly and seeing what happens at this point. I imagine that you won’t be on an all-milk diet when you go to college, so it’s all good.

So, six months here already, and so far you’ve learned who the important players are in your life (Carolyn seems to have hung the moon, and the dogs are way up there in terms of entertainment value), you’ve figured out how to move your body more or less the way you want to, you’re very adept at charming everyone around you with your brilliant smiles and your mad scientist hair, and you’ve pretty much fit yourself into our lives as though you were always here. In the next six months you’ll likely be crawling, maybe even walking, probably learning to say a word or two and understanding many more of the words we say. It’s amazing how much such a little human learns and grows in such a short amount of time. I’m honored to be able to watch it happen.

Love, Mommy