Month 12

birthday pie
Originally uploaded by wi77ow

12 months

Nicknames: Scooter, Turkey legs, Stinky McGillicutty,
Favorite foods: avocado, yogurt, scrambled eggs, cheese, chocolate, cheerios, boob, superfood juice
Favorite tricks: dancing, walking backwards, spin in circles, singing, undoing diapers, pretending to read, pretending to talk on the phone
Thoroughly uninterested in: television, small chairs
Unfortunate common occurrence: tripping
Worst habit: never sleeping for longer than 3 hours at a time
Best habits: kissing, babbling on and on
Favorite places to be: by the door someone just came in so you can play with the snow from their boots, lying down by the coffee table so you can peek at us through the legs, on my hip.

Josephine, this has been the fastest year of my life. I’m at a loss as to how I’m supposed to sum up this past month in this letter, let alone your first year. I do have one thing going for me this morning though, you actually have given me three nights in a row with 5 straight hours of wonderful sleep.

Your aunt Sarah came home from school a week ago and to all of our surprise you reached for her immediately and never looked back. Even though you hadn’t seen her in almost 5 months, you must remember her because you will not allow strangers to touch you. You still are cautious around your uncle Josh and he comes over about once a week.

This isn’t your first winter, but it’s the first winter you might be able to enjoy. I searched and searched for a snowsuit that was waterproof and didn’t have feet so you could use your own boots, and oh yeah, one that would fit a one year old and wasn’t $100+. I guess most babies your size aren’t allowed to walk in the snow? I don’t know but I finally found one and it’s a little big, but it does the job and you think the snow is awesome. You were born in a snowstorm, maybe that says something.

So you are a whole year old now baby. I didn’t throw you a grand birthday party with balloons and streamers, and I didn’t make a cake and take pictures of you smearing it on your face. You’ve had cake before and you were wearing a white dress so you only got a few toddler snacks while the rest of us had a berry pie I made instead. It was a nice day in the end, we sang, opened presents and for dinner we went to a friend’s house where you had the best time feeding their dog every last one of your cheerios. Unfortunately the day started a little rough because you got your 12 month immunizations in addition to a super fun iron test and flu shot. Then! There was a super awesome snow storm the night before and the roads were so bad that the 2 mile drive from the clinic to our house took about 30 minutes. We got stuck in the middle of the road several times and I had to maneuver and spin the tires this way and that while all these SUVs drove past and you screamed the whole time. Happy Birthday!

This month has been a little extra stressful for me. I am trying to sign up for some classes which means that I would have to leave you with someone else for part of the day. Even though you are a charmer and everyone wants to play with you, you are very anxious around strangers. I’ve left you with your aunts, grandma and papa a few times and you do fine for a short amount of time but even though I appreciate a break now and then, I hate walking out the door without you.

When I’m not freaking out about how many hours I have to be away from you, I’m freaking out about how you just dove head first into the coffee table again. (I bought you a pretty, retro icepack for your birthday.) You try everyday to break your personal speed record by picking up something you know you shouldn’t have and sprinting to the next room. Sometimes the coffee table, couch, dog, or a rogue shoe gets in your path and all 22 lbs bounces and rolls across the room. Fortunately, you usually think it’s pretty funny.

No matter what stresses have come this year, I would take them all times 10 if I had to because the joy you bring me trumps them all.

(video of 13 pictures: first one is Josephine 3 days old and every one after was taken on the 23rd of each month)

11 months

elf
Originally uploaded by wi77ow

Dear Josephine, dear dear Miss Josephine,
I am so tired.
The end.

Ok, no, I can write more, but seriously baby, Mama is tired.

When a woman is pregnant her body does some amazing things to prepare for her baby’s arrival. It stretches in ways you wouldn’t believe, it nourishes and protects the growing baby, and it prepares to produce milk when the baby arrives. There is one other little know miracle that the mother’s body performs while gestating though, her brain starts melting. It’s true, a part of the mother’s brain turns into a puddle that sloshes around for a while before leaking out of the tear ducts the next time she watches a commercial with a happy ending. It’s the part that remembers the difficult and horrible times of labor and also parenthood.

If a mother’s brain could remember how painful labor is she would never have more children, but a few weeks or months postpartum and she is looking back at labor like it was a stubbed toe. If a mother could recall every exhausting 2am, 3am, 3:30am, 4am…waking, and every tantrum at the grocery, and every hours long crying session then I think there would be a babies category on EBay.

This brain melting is so very important though, for survival and for sanity. Luckily the part of the brain that remembers the good times swells to fill the space of the puddle. I know that I’ve wanted nothing more than for you to please sleep one more hour, but when we get ready to go to bed the next night I’m not dreading waking up seven times, I’m looking forward to the morning when you’ll pull my face to yours and give me kisses to wake me up. That’s your new thing, kissing, you kiss everyone and everything. Even right now you are sitting on my lap as I type this and you are leaning back every few seconds to give me a kiss. I like this new game. A lot. It might not be the best idea to put your mouth on everything during cold season, but it’s awfully cute. You kiss the dog, your toys, even papa’s scruffy face, and when there’s nothing right near by you sometimes stop in your tracks, bend down, and kiss the carpet. I will really miss this when you stop.

When we get ready to run errands in town I’m not worried that you’ll throw another tantrum when I don’t let you run free and clean off the shelves at Target (even though you probably will). Instead, I smile thinking about how you love to sing as loud as you can while sitting in the cart and everyone in the store stops to tell me what a wonderful baby I have. They don’t even know how wonderful you really are.

There have been days when I would have given my right arm if I could get a babysitter for one hour. I just want to spend a little uninterrupted time organizing computer files or picking up our room without you following behind undoing everything I set straight. One day I got my “wish” and even got to keep my arm. Grandma watched you while I went to see the new James Bond movie. I spent most of the movie thinking about you and absolutely not relaxing. You may be exhausting but you are also so delightful and I miss you every moment you aren’t around.
You are quite rambunctious now. I have spent time with babies before and usually the boys are wilder than the girls. You break that stereotype, shatter it, you are only getting bandages and icepacks for Christmas. You really like to spin until you fall over, which is pretty funny to watch. Sometimes you don’t even bother to spin, you just belly flop right where you are standing. Then other times you try to run as fast as you can through the living room and crash into the couch or a pillow on the floor. You are really good on your feet but you still manage to trip every once in a while and knock your head on the coffee table.

You LOVE dancing to any and every beat. There are the obvious times to dance like when you push the buttons on one of your noisy toys or when mama is watching that Beyonce video again, and the less obvious, like the beat of the security alarm at the mall, which you’ve rocked out to in the shopping cart many times.

You can’t stay still for very long, nor do you even want to. You even walk around when you have a book open and are “reading” the page with the cat and dog on it over and over.
But it’s at night when you really show off your inability to slow down. Even in your sleep you keep going and going. I’ve witnessed you laugh and smile in your sleep for months now, but recently you’ve also lifted your head to give the air a kiss before lying back down. It was precious, as was the time you reached out one hand very deliberately, pinch two fingers together and bring them to your mouth. You were dreaming about having a snack and you gave a big smile “eating” your treat. It’s terribly cute how you dream, but oh how I wish you would just sleep through the night. Like I said before, I’m so veryzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

10 months

I'm undecided.
No, not on the upcoming election, but on how I feel about 10 months. The highs and lows of this month have been so extreme and so many that perhaps what I need to do is make a comparison list. Here it goes:

THINGS I DISLIKED ABOUT 10 MONTHS

1. You have stopped sleeping for longer than 4 hours max at night. Why would you do that? 4 hours? And that's on a good night! You wake up doing this horrible whinny noise and I lay still hoping you'll put yourself back to sleep, but oh that would be too easy. Instead, you sit up, find my face and grab hold of my nose with your razor sharp talons. Sometimes I give in right then, but other times I'm feeling a little more masochistic and I pretend to still be asleep. That's when you start kicking your little hammer heels into my ribs, face, throat, etc. I'm so tired.
2. Everything tastes better off the floor! Also, everything looks better over there! Everything I give you to eat gets tossed to the floor and when the last piece of banana is finally off the table you want out of your highchair so you can walk around eating pieces of dirt and trash off the ground. Then you find anything I have placed on the coffee table, stacked on the ground, put away in your toy box, etc, and you toss it behind you. Thank you, but please leave the decorating to the grown-ups for now.
3. For about 50% of your day you are very unhappy about your physical position in the universe. The whining to be picked up and then the immediate clawing to be put back down is driving me a little bonkers. It would be less annoying if when I put you back down you'd go play, but you don't, you cry to be picked up again, then claw my face, cry, claw, cry, claw....Oh My Gosh What?

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT 10 MONTHS

1. You've started singing along when I sing silly songs to you. Even cuter, you sing along in church. Every Sunday another lady turns to us after service to comment on how precious you are, how well behaved, and how cute it was that you knew to sing when we sang.
2. While I'm on the subject of mimicking, you know how to hold a phone to your ear and say hello. You don't stop there though and that's the best part, you will hold anything to your ear and walk in a circle around the room babbling on and on and on. I've seen you pull one sock off, hold to the side of your head, and for at least a full minute you walked around talking and laughing before you noticed I was watching you. What are you talking about? Who are you calling? Who are you mimicking? Goodness knows I never answer my phone.
3. When you aren't clinging and crying and clawing you do pretty well entertaining yourself. Often you just walk around the house stopping to examine this or that, answer a call on your hair brush, and then when I can no longer hear you stomping around I know exactly where you are. You have a club house under the dinning room table and you are happy to sit there for long stretches of time. I love catching you under there, it's adorable, but I have to wonder, are you planning something? Should I be concerned about some kind of baby overtaking?
4. There's this thing you do with your tongue now that's pretty funny. I guess it's because you have those two teeth on the bottom that you are still getting used to. You know it's funny when you poke your tongue out and you do it when we're playing to get a laugh out of me. You know all the tricks to get me to smile and laugh, like starting a game of peek-a-boo or running towards me only to turn at the last minute and crash into a pillow. I love playing with you.
5. You know how to cuddle and give kisses now. I can ask for a kiss from you and I LOVE that. You kiss the dog, you try to kiss the cat, and you give your mama kisses. That right there might be worth double points.

Ok, so it looks like the pros outweigh the cons for 10 months. 11 months, are you paying attention? It was a close race, but I guess 10 months was pretty good, I'm not surprised.

9 Months

falling
Originally uploaded by wi77ow

Hello Baby,
You turned 9 months old a few days ago and you probably want to know why I’m so late in writing this letter. Well, we’ve been sick. Snotty, sneezy, fever, achy, crying, sick. A few days would go by and I’d think we were pretty much better, all we’d need is one more night of semi-decent sleep, then the next morning I would wake up dead and it’s really hard to take care of a baby when you are dead, much less write a monthly letter. Yesterday morning we were finally feeling well enough that the thought of going to the grocery didn’t make me cry, but first we had a visit with your doctor so those mean nurses could poke you in the legs again (sorry, I hate it more than you do) and the rest of the day was pretty much shot. The only way I managed to get this typed out today was because I happened to wake up a little early and you, well, didn’t. You were so sleepy this morning that in the shower I noticed you weren’t playing with your toys and your head was bobbing a little and when I looked I saw you had actually fallen asleep sitting up.
Sick or not you have become quite feisty in your old age. You love demonstrating how smart you are by showing you know exactly where you are not allowed to go and then you go there. You aren’t allowed on the dog bed that sits at the end of the couch, and you know this. Several times a day you walk or crawl towards the bed and will stop six inches in front of it and stare at me. You are waiting for me to notice that you will not in fact bend to my oppressive will and follow my “rules”. Ha! Your wild spirit cannot be tamed! Anyway, I’ll tell you to stop and you screech back something, I get up to physically move you and you reach over and defiantly slap one hand on the bed right before I scoop you up and plop you some place else. That’s not the end of it though, oh no, no matter where I put you down you make a bee line straight back towards the bed, laughing the whole time. Rinse and repeat.
Wait, did you notice that new word I used up there? I typed out that you walk to the dog bed. Yep, you are walking. Thankfully, so far you are still content to be carried around places that are less familiar, like church or the grocery, but here at the house you love walking back and forth like no big deal, you’ve been doing this all along.
When you aren’t showing off your fine motor skills you have been working hard on fine tuning your verbal abilities. Specifically, you are working hard at screeching so loudly that the windows actually rattle. Our new neighbors are probably wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into living next door to a family that whips their cats around by their tails for sport. Little do they know that horrible noise is not a flying cat, but it’s my daughter, trying to grab a dirty spoon out of the open dishwasher.
My favorite trick of yours though, and probably the main reason I have decided to keep you, is that you know exactly when to laugh and even though it’s usually a fake forced laugh, it’s the hardiest fake laugh I have ever heard. You watch two people having a conversation and when one person pauses to chuckle or even just smile you bust out laughing like you just heard the best joke ever. Every night your Papa and I watch The Daily Show, Colbert Report and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Even though you are usually busy trying to empty a tissue box or pull the ears off the cat, you take a few breaks to look up at the TV screen and laugh, then you look over at papa and laugh, showing him you totally got that joke too.
Josephine, you were in my belly for 9 months and now you’ve spent 9 months out in the world. The latter has been way more fun than the former, not because pregnancy sucks, but because you rock.

8 Months

Josephine,

This month has been packed with firsts that I hope to never forget. I have a perpetual calendar that I write things on, like your first word, mama, and the first time you took a few steps before crashing into my lap. Next year when those dates come back around, I'll see that July 30th 2008 you got up on both knees to crawl for real instead of the army scoot you've been perfecting. I'll document all of your milestones for sure, but this month there was so much more that I want to remember besides.

I don't want to forget how we share a piece of chocolate sometimes in the afternoon. I put a square of whatever chocolate grandma has around the house in my lips and you try to bite the corner that sticks out. My little baby bird has to give her mama a kiss if she wants to have a taste. I have no idea how you still manage to get chocolate all over your face, a candy goatee framing that perfect smile of yours.




I want to always hang on to the nights that you would get a second wind. You would practice your hollering all day and with your pipes all warmed up you'd play a very loud game of come catch me Papa. A game that has you yell and scream and laugh until Papa crawls over and you try to scamper away but you only manage to tumble over onto a pillow. Then you laugh even louder and send Papa hiding behind the pillow and the game turns into the loudest game of peek-a-boo in history.


You are very good at playing with everyone. You know when you are supposed to laugh even though you don't get the joke and you can always get any one's attention back on you if we dare take a minute to talk to someone else in the room. You also know how to tear your diaper off if I don't put it on backwards. You tear one side half way open, look to see if I have seen what you've done, then finish the job as fast as you can.



I know this won't last forever, but I wish it would: I love when you stare at me when you are sitting in the shopping cart and when I look into your eyes you give me the most genuine smile one person has ever given another. You smile like you know how much I love you. You smile like you have to show all the love in the world in one facial expression.

Here's something I don't have a picture of, my most special time with you in the morning: I bring you in the shower with me now. I hold you in my arms for the first minute and let you hold your hand in the stream of water, then set you down with some toys while I wash my hair. You do just fine in there, then I stop the drain and let you splash in the bath while I towel off. If I don't set you down fast enough though, you fall asleep, just conk right out without warning on my shoulder. It's hard to describe the special feeling of having your tiny wet body snuggled up to me, your arms wrapped as far around my neck as they can reach.

Month 7

Everywhere I take you, Josephine, people stop me to tell me how beautiful my baby is. They comment on how much hair you have, pull on your tiny toes and then ask me how old you are. Do you know what I have to say now? I have to say 7 MONTHS. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I would have written this earlier but I've been having too much fun playing with you lately, and I hesitate to write this but, Finally. Not that you aren't always a totally fun baby, but this past month has been a little rough for your mother's nerves. The separation anxiety paired with increased mobility left me with about 15 sec to myself everyday. 15 seconds is not enough time to go to the bathroom by myself, FYI.
This month you and I went on an airplane, four airplanes actually, and we survived. My best friend Kelly, her fiance, and their daughter Paris finally got to meet you. I haven't seen them since you were in my belly and Paris was soooo confused about why I ate a baby. How else could there be a baby in my belly?
You and Paris were BFFs almost immediately. There were so many moments that the two of you were quieltly playing and unaware that I was watching from the kitchen and I just died from the picture-perfectness of it all. The sappy fantasy that two young girlfriends have that one day they will have babies that will be best friends...for a week that fantasy came true. Those moments made all the crying on the plane and pooping in the airport totally worth it.
When we got home you waited a few days before you had your first real fever. I'm pretty proud of myself with how I reacted to you being a sicky baby. I wasn't the nerotic first time parent, I was the cool and composed rational parent that shushed the crazy family that asked if I was taking you in to the doctor's. You were fine, you are fine, but that's it honey, you aren't allowed to get sick again this decade.
You know what? I don't know if I have much else to say about this month. The more I gush about how cute and smart and fun you are, the more I sound like every mom with every baby. And I'm not every mom, and you aren't every baby, and I don't want to sound like we are. At least not in these letters to you. So this is all I can put out there this month, Josephine. I love you so much.

6 months

She wakes up a few times in the night, technically it's morning, but she's the only one that wants to be up. Usually sometime between 3 and 5 am I look over to her tossing and turning in her bed and her head pops up as she whips around to look at me as if she sensed I was now awake. I'm greeted by a giant smile on her face and a small giggle, she's ready to play. I shush her, nurse her, and if she isn't asleep after that, I let her lay in the crook of my arm as she half sings, half cries, herself to sleep again.

8am, the sun is shining through the windows and with her eyes still squeezed tightly shut she starts grunting and thrashing, she's hungry. I nurse her and she is sound asleep again, breakfast in bed, she has no idea how good she has it.

I get up for the day, pour a cup of coffee and while my computer is starting up I walk back into the bedroom to find her looking around on her back. When she sees me she kicks and squeals and starts a song that I call her good-morning song, a series of Oohs and Aahs interrupted by a giggle here and there. I lay down next to her until she finishes, she grabs at my face to acknowledge my presence but avoids looking at me until the song is done.

She sits next to me on the couch while I start my coffee and within a few minutes she's reclining into my side, my arm around her, watching the news with me and singing out to the ceiling. Sometimes she takes a brake from exercising her vocal cords to try an fit her feet in her mouth.

When she starts to get restless I sit her on the floor and, after a quick scan of the room, she crawls strait toward the pile of magazines by the coffee table, most of them wrinkled and puckered from previous mouthings.

After lunch I can see in her face that she is ready for a nap but she has other ideas. She is tired of all the toys I offer and cries real tears when I set her down. To calm her I sing a song that always brings a smile to her face:

Oh I wish I was a little bar of soap (bar of soap)

Oh I wish I was a little bar of soap (bar of soap)

I'd go slidey slidey slidey, Over Josephine's body

Oh I wish I was a little bar of soap (bar of soap!)

I tickle her when I sing "slidey slidey slidey" and she's not upset anymore, but still tired. I hold her close with one hand and prop open a book with the other and read out loud until she is asleep on my shoulder.



It's late in the afternoon but still too early to start worrying about dinner so we go explore the back yard. I sit her in a shady spot on the grass; the grass has never bothered her bare feet and legs. I lay down next to her in the sun and watch her fumble with a toy fish and a oak leaf she picked up, she is more interested in the leaf. Tomorrow I'll put some warm water in her pool and let her splash her energy out. She likes splashing and trying to catch the toys that go floating by, but the real reason I lather her in sunscreen, warm up the water, and lay out towels to sit on is so her grandmother can watch her "swim".



Earlier in the day I sat in the rocking chair with her in my lap. I was reading to her, hoping she'd fall asleep, but she was much more interested in trying to eat the book, then her feet. I sat quietly for a few minutes just looking at the back of her little brown fuzzy head, that head that is so soft and comforting when it nuzzles my shoulder and fits so perfectly under my chin it's as if it is a part of me rather than belonging to a separate being. I imagined brushing her hair back into a ponytail in preparation for her first day of school, and combing out the tangles after a bath, braiding it so it wouldn't be ratty in the morning. Maybe she'll want to keep it short when she's older, maybe it'll be curly, maybe she'll scream that I'm pulling too hard, and maybe she'll sit on my lap like this for years to come. I hope she does.



She falls asleep around 8pm but will wake up in about an hour so that I can change her into her night-time diaper, then she'll want to play and eat and finally fall back asleep in my lap as we watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report with Papa. She'll wake up around 3 again, and when she does I'll let her lay in the crook of my arm, her warm face on my skin, until she has fallen back to sleep.

Month Five

I organize all the pictures I take of you by month and when I had to create a new folder with the name "month five" I was kind of upset. In many ways it seems like time has gone too fast, and I know I say this every month, but it's true. Sometimes though, I am just so impressed at what an incredibly fun person you have become in just five months.

Josephine, you laugh every day. Every Day! You sometimes get fussy and want to be picked up and then grandma or papa come around the corner and you start giggling like you have just heard the best joke. At this point I am still your favorite person, I'm the only one who can feed you, but you get a little tired of looking at me by the end of the day and I don't blame you at all.

You have officially all-by-yourself rolled over, but more impressive is how fast you can spin in a circle. I can put you down for a nap and one minute later check on you and you are facing the opposite way I layed you down and you've pulled one of your stuffed toys under your head like a pillow.

You have really grown in your noise making this month. There's this thing you do sometimes when you see grandma, you suck air in and make a noise like a zombie and grandma always makes the noise right back at you and you think it's just the best thing in the world. Other days you practice squealing as loud and high pitched as you can. Usually when you are in your highchair the squealing starts, along with furious kicking and throwing of all toys within reach.

You are so full of new tricks! One trick that I'm not sure I understand is the scratching. Always with the scratching. Laying on the couch, scratch scratch scratch. Nursing, scratch scratch scratch. Sitting in your highchair, scratch scratch scratch. Scratch scratch scratch.

You might think that the best thing this month is that you have started sleeping though the night on occasion. It is great, but I'm still sad that you don't like to snuggle as much anymore. Sometimes you still wake up in the middle of the night and if it's early enough and I'm awake enough I put you back in your bed after feeding you, but sometimes I fall asleep with you by my side and instead of your head finding my armpit like it used to, you start flailing your arms and kicking you feet so hard that it's like trying to sleep through an earthquake. (the only time I've been someplace where there was a registered earthquake I actually did sleep through it, so whatever, you know what I mean. You kick a lot.)

No, the best thing is when you see me come into the room and you squeal, and smile, and kick your feet so fast you almost take off in flight. The best thing is when I come into the bedroom as you are waking up from a nap and your little brown fuzzy head is peeking up just enough to see who's coming in and you get a big smile on your face as you quickly duck your head back down, rub your face, and pop back up. The best thing is when you are nursing and you feel so comfortable that you start singing between moments of sucking and you look up at me, waiting for eye contact so you can laugh and go back to nursing and singing. The best thing is that I know you are supposed to be my daughter and I am supposed to be your mother and I have never been more sure of anything in my life.

Month Four

Four months huh? Can you believe it's been that long since you were ripped from my belly? Of course being only 4 months old you don't really have any concept of time do you? Well for me it's been a 4 month long blur. And to be honest, this whole 'time flying' business is starting to piss me off.





This month you have become quite attached to your mother. I admit though, that sometimes? the feeling is totally mutual. There may have been many moments that I wished someone else would take you so I could just make a freaking sandwich. But this month has been filled with moments of missing the hell out of you when you were only napping for 30 min in the other room. When I pick you up out of your bed I tell you how I've been missing you and I hold your little body close and try to memorize what that moment feels like. The feeling of your breath on my neck, the weight of you in my arms, how your body melds perfectly into mine, it is all so precious to me.



After all that mushy missing you business I look at the clock and see you've only napped a total of 15 min in the last week and WHY AREN'T YOU TIRED? Oh right, that whole sleep regression thing. I've read horror stories about babies that start their 4 month regression and don't go back to sleep until after their 9 month regression. You aren't that kind of baby though, tell me you aren't that kind of baby. Mama is tired.



(falling asleep on the couch)


I do understand though, that the reason you aren't sleeping is because you are learning all kinds of new tricks. To date you haven't mastered any of the more recognizable milestones like rolling over, crawling, writing a novel, or cutting teeth, but you haven't been without accomplishments. You babble on and on with new sounds every day and it's one of my favorite things in the whole world to look into your eyes and listen to you tell me about all the dreams you had last night. You also mastered spitting. Yep, it started with some funny sounds, then raspberries and spit bubbles, to finally full on spitting in my face. You find this pretty funny too I might add, even though you don't know what you are doing, luckily you prefer the raspberries.

You are laughing a lot more. You like the mirror and when I kiss you near your armpits the best. I also discovered that you love bouncing in my arms. I'm not talking about the kind of bouncing you see mothers doing at restaurants when their babies are crying and other diners are giving the stink eye (ahem Buca di Beppo), no, I'm talking about serious bouncing. I have a huge exercise ball that I use instead of a rocking chair and for the first three months of your life you would fall asleep almost instantly when I would hold you and bounce lightly. Now, however, you get excited when I sit down on it because you know I'll bounce you real high, and you open your mouth as wide as it'll go because that's what you do when you are really happy. You sometimes erupt into a fit of laughter, but mostly you just try to open your mouth a little bit wider than your face will allow.




(laughing w/ grandma)

We made the switch to reusable diapers this month. I'm happy with it, you seem unfazed, but everyone else in the house seems either grossed out (Martha) or just kinda confused about why I would want to do this (grandma and grandpa).


*I want you to know that right now, as I am uploading pictures to this post, I went to put on my PJs and your grandpa, (who is now "papa") attempted to check his email on my computer. If I had taken one second longer, all my work would have been lost and you would have no memory of ever meeting your grandfather.

You know what Josephine? I can't believe how big you've gotten. Seriously. You are exclusively breastfed, no formula or solids, you were on the small side (of the healthy average) when you were born, yet you weigh in at the top of the charts now. As of today, you are in the 90th percentile for weight and 80th percentile for height. Is grandma sneaking you candy?


The next thing I want to say is pretty difficult to express accurately. When you are older, I want you to be able to read these posts and understand a little bit what it is like for me to be your mother and how much I have always loved you.

Before you have a baby you can't know what it's going to be like when you do. I knew I was going to love you, I was already in love with you before you were born, but I love you differently today than I did in the first few weeks of your life. See, this is where I don't want you to misunderstand me; I LOVED you like crazy the moment I saw your puffy face peek over the curtain in the operating room. But....most of what I did for the first few weeks was instinct. I still act on instinct everyday, but now I also know who you are and can make day-to-day decisions based on our relationship. I know there will come a day when you won't be able to stand me. You'll slam the door to your bedroom, open it, slam it again, and write about how I just don't understand you in your diary. Until then, I am going to cherish every snuggle, because that's the relationship I have with my daughter today.