Happy 6-Month Birthday, Tree Faerie!

Dear Tree Faerie,

As of today, you are 6 months old, and what a wild ride it has been! Time has simply flown by! In the beginning I was eager for you to start interacting more, and now I’m begging you to slow down and be a baby for just a little longer.

Yes, my baby is growing up quickly. Right now you’re trying to crawl. It’s so much fun to watch you play in the floor, especially when you think your daddy and I are not watching. You get on your hands and knees and rock back and forth so hard that it looks like you might just launch yourself right off the ground! In the past couple of days, you’ve started putting one knee up, trying to will yourself to move forward instead of backward. So far, it still ends in you pushing yourself backward, but I know you’ll get the hang of it very soon.

We haven’t tried any other solid foods besides rice cereal and bananas. We actually took a couple of weeks off while you were suffering from a double ear infection. What fun that was! (Remind me to teach you more about sarcasm later.) You were NOT a happy camper with the ear infections. You didn’t want to nurse. You didn’t want to sleep. You didn’t want to be awake. You certainly did not want to be very far from me. In fact, I think Daddy was beginning to think you hated him because every time I handed you off to him, you screamed. Every time he kissed you, you screamed. If he looked at you strangely, you screamed. Basically, you just screamed unless I was walking around with you. Or unless I actually managed to convinced you how wonderful sleep could be.

The doctor put you on amoxicillin, but by the 4^th day, you were throwing up regularly, so we moved on to antibiotic shots. That was so much easier for the both of us since giving you oral medication seemed to be a losing battle. At least with the shots, you were over the trauma quickly. You also got better quickly. When we went to the doctor yesterday for your 6-month shots and a follow up for the ear infections, I was half-afraid she would tell me that the right ear was still infected. Thankfully she gave you a clean bill of health. You got really mad when the nurse was trying to give you the oral immunization, but you handled your shots really well.

Now that the ear infection is over, you’re sleeping about 8 hours every night, which means I can get in 7 hours when I’m lucky. Of course, you still have the occasional night where you’re up every 2 hours, but we seem to muddle through those, too.

Father’s Day was a lot of fun! You’ve opened up a whole slew of new gift ideas for your daddy. For his first Father’s Day, I made you two onesies – one said Daddy’s Punk Rock Girl and the other said Daddy’s Little Pagan. Daddy LOVED them! His reaction was PERFECT! I think it would be kind of cool to get into the business of making these to sell. They were a lot of fun to make, and everyone who saw them loved them! And of course you were absolutely adorable in them!

We’ve officially set up a bedtime routine. It consists of:

-changing your clothes and your diaper – I put you to bed in a onesie because you’re rather warm-natured, but I may go back to using sleepers now that the downstairs AC is working again. I don’t want you getting too cold!

-a Baby Rub ™ - This is where I use the lavender lotion to give you a little baby massage, concentrating on the arms, legs, feet, and tummy. You giggle with anticipation whenever I grab the bottle of lotion. It’s awesome!

-a bedtime story – usually either Oh, the Places You’ll Go or The Bear Snores On, sometimes both. We also have other books we occasionally read, but we always finish off with one of those.

-snuggles and Smoogles ™ – both from me and Daddy. When you’re in the mood for snuggles and Smoogles ™ (smoochy snuggles), you giggle and babble delightedly until either you’re done or we’re done, whichever comes first.

-nursing and rocking to sleep – I’m really going to miss this part when we decide to wean. Maybe I’ll still be able to snuggle and rock you then.

I really love our bedtime routine because it gives us another opportunity to bond. I also love hanging out with you, playing with you, watching TV with you, listening to you babble…

Which reminds me! I nearly forgot to include this! YOU SAID YOUR FIRST WORD!!! Granted, I don’t think you KNOW what you’re saying, but you at least repeated it! Your first word was –

DADA!

You’ve been saying DADADADADADADA and BLABLABLABLABLABLABLA a lot lately, and I’ve been trying to get you to just say Dada. Well, on July 4^th, we were our to dinner with a wonderful friend, and you were sitting in your seat saying, “Dadadadadadadada.” I looked over at you and said, “You’re supposed to say Dada and leave it at that. Dada.” I turned away to continue talking to our friend, and the next sounds you made were, “Dada.” Very matter-of-factly. You even repeated it when I repeated it back to you! It was awesome! And thankfully your daddy was sitting right there to hear it! Now, under normal circumstances, as I’m sure you’ll soon learn, I tend to be a perfectionist. If I was going to be a perfectionist about this, I’d have to wait until you actually intentionally said a word and knew its meaning. When I told your doctor about this, she said it was completely okay to count it as your first word because you’re one smart cookie, so who knows what you may have meant by it!

Now I’m working on getting you to say “Mama”, which is proving to be difficult since you don’t really make the ‘M’ sound right now. :)

Love always,

Mama