7 Months

This has been such an exciting month for you. You’ve spent most of it hanging out on the floor, sitting up just like a big girl. Until you lose your balance and fall over that is. Then you lay on floor and kick and you’ve discovered that rolling can get you where you want to go. Some of the time. You’re already working on this crawling thing. You get yourself forward and on to your knees and then you pause for a moment as the wheels turn and you try to figure out where to go from here. Usually you end up pitching forward onto your face and then you drag yourself forward with your forearms. Maybe you want to be in one of those BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE commercials. Today you saw something you wanted, a twitching cat tail. In no time at all you had dragged yourself forward and had it in your hand. It was a very tolerant cat, he did not scratch you.

We’ve been working hard to keep the coins off of the floor, and the Lego have been put away indefinitely so that you can’t find them and choke. We also have to keep any paper off of the floor. You love, love, love, paper, which is sweet when all you want to do is wave it around and coo, but then you want to taste it, and eat it and chew it into little pulpy balls and then choke on them and poop them out the other end. No more paper for you. It’s amazing what I’ve forgotten in 3 years about baby safety.

The sitting up means that you get to come in the shower with mommy now and sit in the tub with some toys, and I don’t have to wait until you’re asleep any more to take one. Not that I get to shower any more frequently as a result. I now have to plan it for a time when your siblings are safely occupied indoors and won’t be inviting their friends into my bedroom while I’m naked. But it saves time on baths for you. We’re both done at once.

You like to grab the wipe when I am changing your diaper and “help”. This is a bit distressing when you’re poopy and we have to wash your hands but you seem to get the idea of what a wipe is for and actually use it properly. Maybe you’ll learn to wipe your own bum before you’re five. That would be so exciting, for me at least.

I put you in a tiny little swimsuit this month, and took you swimming. You started kicking immediately and tried to get on your belly to stick your face in the water. You don’t seem to mind water in your face. You blink a little and go back to excited kicking. It’s been fun to spend afternoons in the pool with you.

You know when people are complimenting you. You acknowledge the compliment by smiling wider, closing your eyes and pressing your face into my chest, like you’re trying to appear modest. It’s the most flirtatious things I have ever seen a baby do.

You have been really cranky the past few days. I wonder if you are teething, or if you are still scared or sore after that fall you had on Sunday. You and I were sharing a twin bed at Beema’s house. I was sure to remember the side rail and I tucked a blanket in next to the wall so you wouldn’t get stuck in the crack, and I put a big pillow at your feet where the bed rail ended. Somehow when you woke up, way after I did, you still sleep in in the morning, you passed all of that and landed on the hard wood floor with a sickening slap and then you cried and didn’t stop for what felt like days. And your skin was more green than pink. It was terrible and we all felt awful and since then every time you cry I guiltily wonder if it’s because of that fall.

Of course the most likely reason for your crankiness is that you are ready for solid food and your lazy mother wants you to just keep exclusively breastfeeding forever so I don’t have to go to all the bother of making baby food and cleaning you off and battling with you over which of us gets to hold the spoon. The breastfeeding relationship we have is so much more convenient. But I know it’s coming to an end soon, you are nursing longer and more often, and soon you will not be satisfied any longer with the liquid diet that has made you so fat and you will need more. Stop growing up so fast. I don’t really mean that, yes I do, no I don’t…but, well, slow down would you. I’m not ready for you to stop being a baby just yet.