It's not you, it's me...

Dearest Lilah,

Hm. So it's been 7 weeks since I last posted. That would seem to indicate that you haven't done anything in that time. But that's not true. In the past 7 weeks, you have turned from seven to eight months old, and as of today, from eight to nine. You've been on the outside for exactly as long as you were on the inside (39 weeks), and I have to say, you've had a very busy 18 months!

You are SO big! I don't have your exact stats, but I know that it's a struggle for me to drag you up off the floor when you used to be just a little feather I carried around. You are mostly wearing 9-12 month clothes, though the 9 month PJs are a little short on you these days. You wear size 3 diapers by day and size 4s at night to hold ALL the pee! You still only have two teeth...I would have thought that the top two would have come in by now, but they are apparently content to leave the bottoms without a matched pair.

You're still not interested in crawling properly. You toy around with getting on your knees to go, but you're far more interested in just getting places than getting there properly, so you always collapse and quickly army crawl yourself - pushing with pink little toes - across the room faster than I could ever imagine anyone traveling that way.

You have learned how to sit back up from being on your tummy. What a shock that was! The first time I suspected you did it was last week, but at the time I thought maybe you had just not really gotten all the way down on your tummy. But yesterday I knew for sure! You were crawling all around the living room and all of a sudden, there you sat like a big girl! You looked rather proud of yourself!

You also are practicing waving. You are not consistent, but when asked "Can you wave?" and shown an example, you will curl those little fingers up and down. Sometimes you throw your hand up and make it whole-hearted. Today, you got a wink from the very nice postman when you sleepily gave him a shy grin and a little bitty wave. Yesterday in Barnes and Noble, a man looking at travel books said, "Well hello!" and you smiled your sweet smile, and he said, "Boy, they just make you feel like a million bucks, you know?" and proceeded to tell me how his boys were both teenagers and he missed sweet little baby smiles.

You make people happy. It makes me happy. It makes you happy. Happy, happy, happy.

I'm probably just being a proud mom, but I also think you say the dog's name. "Nidney! Nidney! Nidney!" it sounds like you say whenever she comes in the room. I'm not really sure that I want you to be saying her name, since you never say "Mommy." That kind of works my self-confidence.

You're eating like a champ these days. Pears, apples, bananas, honeydew, cantaloupe, grapes, spinach, sweet potato, carrots, zucchini, and butternut squash are all high on your list of favorites. What do you hate? Green beans. They make you gag. Every. Time. You. Eat. Them. I've mixed them with squash. I've mixed them with spinach. I've mixed them with pears. You do not like them. Green beans are your eggs and ham. I keep giving them to you because I made so much. How was I supposed to know you'd hate them? You ate everything with a happy face until now. So I promise: After this batch, I'll be laying off the green beans. There are too many other yummy things for you to eat for me to force you to eat something you hate.

So, my big nine month old girl, that is what you've been up to. You bring me a lot of joy, despite being into EVERYTHING these days. And I even on the nights when I'm ready for you to go to bed, I end up missing you a couple of hours later.

Thanks for still being awesome.

Love,
Mommy