Dear Audrey,
For the first few months of your life, my constant thought was…
“Time is going by so fast — I can’t believe she’s XX months old!”
But now, I believe it. You are a little girl.
There’s still plenty of baby left, but with every passing day, I see less and less of my tiny newborn and more of my strong, growing, always-moving, babbling, nearly-crawling (you made it halfway across the room last night) toddler.
You are a ball of joy. While you still have serious moments, your default emotion is happy. You have this funny laugh — you don’t build up; you explode with giggles when something (Daddy making funny faces, Daddy playing peekaboo, Daddy bouncing you, Daddy flying you over his head — sensing a theme?) makes you excited.
Playing with you has taken on a new meaning. I used to be able to put you on your back and let you amuse yourself by grabbing your toes or looking at the fan, but now you need toys or a person to interact with.
You stack things and bang rattles against tables and pull my hair and pull blankets over your face to hide and hug stuffed animals and so much more.
We are so lucky that you’re a good “outside” kid, too — it means that we can and do take you to the beach, the zoo, restaurants, the grocery store and more.
It helps that you’re on a schedule of sorts. It still changes day to day when you will eat, sleep and play, but it generally follows the same pattern.
Although, your weekday and weekend schedules are very different. You do not like to nap at daycare. Maybe there’s too much fun to be had? You often sleep only an hour (or less) during the day, and then you make up for it with monster naps when you get home and lots of sleep during the weekends.
We have not found a food you don’t like, but you have a definite preference for bananas, avocado and puff cereal. It’s seriously messy, so I (and the dogs) just embrace it and figure that’s what baths are for. You love grabbing the spoon once I load it up with yogurt or applesauce or hummus, and you’re getting better at actually aiming it into your mouth.
The most remarkable change this month is your mobility. You not only roll back and forth, but you can roll almost immediately from your back to your front and then up into a sitting position. More and more, I go to get you out of your crib in the morning and am greeted by a chatty, sitting-up baby.
You’re getting better at transitioning from sitting into an all-fours position, too, and while I won’t say you’re officially crawling yet, you have started to inch forward on your knees (you’ve been scooting backwards for weeks) moments after I finished the first draft of this post, you started crawling across the room and back. I don’t know if you’re skipping the army crawl, but you have also mastered the art of rocking (very aggressively) back and forth on your knees.
You are my little daredevil. You’re happiest when riding on our shoulders, being thrown into the air, bouncing on our knees, being “dropped” (we hold you up in the air and let you freefall for an instant before catching you) and anything else that makes Mommy’s heart stop.
But overall, you are a smart, funny, fun little girl. It’s crazy to think that I didn’t know you 8 months ago. I can’t imagine not having you in my life.
I love you SO much, Buggy.
Love,
Mommy
