life began when i saw your face.
dear ellie,
tomorrow you turn six months old. that means the entire first half of the first year of your life is behind you, which is amazing to me. my sense of time escapes me, as i feel like i just saw your face, watched you smile, listened to you laugh for the first time.
in the last month you have become more than a squishy blob of a thing that just poops, cries and scares the hell out of me. you have become a little person with a big personality. you kick and wiggle and roll and talk, and when you laugh you really laugh. you love to be tickled under your arms, to stand on my lap, to sit up on your own. you smile when i try to eat your cheeks and you laugh out loud when i try to gobble up your neck. you have discovered that if you throw yourself backward while sitting on my lap that the whole world turns UPSIDE DOWN! you love to throw yourself backward and you'll wait there upside down for as long as i'll let you stay that way, and when i pull you back up you look drunk from happiness.
you sleep eleven hours straight every night, a routine that happily surprised us when we moved you out of our bed and into your crib. we still check on you every hour until we go to sleep ourselves, not because we're worried but because we love to look at you.
we have a pretty solid routine during the day, also, one that can be timed by the clock depending on what time you wake in the morning. after exactly two hours of playing you show signs of fatigue and make it clear that you want nothing more than to be asleep. it took about a week of grueling sleep training for you to make the connection between sleep and your crib, but i'm proud to say you are now able to fall asleep within minutes of being put down. i am in awe of your capacity to learn.
i love you, ellie girl. i love that you talk merrily to yourself in your crib every morning while you wait for me to come get you, and i love that your face brightens like a sun-filled room when i do. you have made my life so complex and crazy and intense and just when i think my love for you couldn't be any bigger, i wake up and discover that i love you even more.
happy half-birthday, my beautiful little one <3
love,
mommy