6 months

To my Kelly Belly,

6 months old. Your father and I can't believe it. How did we get here so fast?! When you were first born, every day felt like an eternity. 6 weeks sounded old. Yet here we are, halfway to celebrating your first year. This has been a big month for you! We had to stop swaddling you because you kept Houdini-ing out of the wrap we would put you in to sleep. We would find you tangled up and looking at us like "C'mon guys, I'm not a 2 month old anymore". Every so often you wake us up because you have rolled onto your belly and get stuck, and lord knows it would be ridiculous to sleep on your stomach! Oh, no, why just sleep on your stomach when you have parents who will come flip you over? You have mastered going from your back to your stomach, which is very exciting indeed. This means you can reach any toy within a foot radius and that you can change your perspective in seconds. Somewhere along the line though, you have forgotten how to flip over to your back. How does that happen? You spent most of your 3rd month happily rolling from your stomach to your back, and now that you can go the other way that knowledge seems to have up and vanished out of your baby brain. Where did it go? Is it coming back? It would reaaaally help your parents sleep if you could dig deep and remember how to do it.

On the whole though, you are a great sleeper. You have gotten into a fairly routine nap schedule that begins with a one or two hour nap right around 9 am. This is the perfect time for me to wash my face, make some coffee, and sit on my ass and read a magazine do some housework. You generally have another nap around 1pm, and then one in the early evening. You're in bed between 7:45 - 8:00, leaving your father and I some nice QT.  6 nights out of 7, you sleep straight through until 7:30 or so, allowing us to get in at least 8 hours of sleep ourselves. Oh Kellen, we are aware of how lucky we are. Some of your baby friends are still waking every few hours, and we can't believe we're among the lucky few who get a baby that sleeps through the night so early. It appears that you love sleep as much as your parents.

You are silly fun to play with, and have graduated from being a bitty one that needs to be shown toys to a big baby that loves to interact and figure things out. Smiles, coos and babbles (your favorite sound being "ma-ma", of course) wash over us as you lay on your play mat or sit in your bouncer. We have such fun teasing you and trying to make you giggle, and when we are rewarded with your parrot-like sqwak of a laugh, it's all we can do not to burst with happiness. Our favorite game? Startling you. You LOVE to be startled. We're not talking a gentle "Boo! Teeheehee!" either. You love when I full out lunge at you yelling "BOO! HAHAHAHA!", causing your whole body to jump, your eyes to fly wide open, and a huge giggle to escape from your mouth. I absolutely HATE when that level of startledness (not a word, I know) happens to me, it's part of the reason I don't watch scary movies, but you must be a much braver human than I because you absolutely delight in this game. I am convinced you will be ten years old, watching terribly scary movies with your Uncle Geoff and Aunt Shalie, all of you giggling together at startling moments that no normal human being would find entertaining.

Each week you and I meet up with a group of 9 or so women and their babies, women who have become my friends in my quest to be a good mother to you. All of their children are within a month of your age and are a complete joy to be around. I was watching you when we were with them the other day, and it became apparent to me how much of an observer you are. While most of the little ones were rolling around, banging toys and smiling at each other, you laid quietly, clutching a little toy cup, tiny smile on your face, eyes bouncing around the room. Every once in a while you would pick up a new toy or change your position to look at a different part of the play mat, but for the most part you just watched intently, learning all sorts of things I could never begin to guess. In this way you seem so much like your father, happy to sit back and see what unfolds in front of you (while looking handsome and debonair, of course).

I always tear up at the end of these letters, trying to think of a way to close them while expressing to you how important you are to me and how much joy you bring me. I could repeat myself a thousand times over, and probably will throughout your life, all with the hope that you will always, always know how much I love you.

BOO!


Love, Mama