Six Months

Dear Serena Camille,

On Saturday we celebrated your half birthday. You are half a year old! I can hardly believe that. Time seems to fly by so fast these days. I love watching you grow so it is not necessarily a bad thing. But I also wish that I could keep you as my little baby forever. You are becoming such a beautiful, independent, smart baby. You started crawling when you were just five months old, a full month before your big sister learned. Of course, you have added incentive trying to keep up with her and she is tough to keep up with. You have perfected your army crawl and are almost ready to start the real hands and knees crawling, but not quite there yet. You get up on your knees and rock back and forth, sometimes even standing on your feet and hands. You can get into places so quick now and I have to keep a constant eye on you. If I leave the room for just a minute, when I return you have already crossed it. You love to explore and crawl everywhere you can possibly fit, including behind the couch, under the kitchen table, in the kitty bed, etc. You have not tried to climb the stairs yet, for which I am very grateful.

You have graduated to Stage 2 foods now and you eat about two canisters a day; usually a fruit in the morning and a veggie for dinner. I gave you some water in a sippy cup for the first time last week and you seemed to like it. I can't wait to start on cheerios or fruit puffs, but I am scared at the same time of the choking hazards. I can never quite remember each stage with Calli, since it's been almost three years; but that is fun because everything with you seems new again.

Calli absolutely adores you. She loves to help and do anything she can. She fed you your solids for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was a mess but you both had a lot of fun. She is the only one who can make you laugh on a consistent basis. It never fails that when she enters the room, your face lights up and turns toward her. She is quite protective of you as well when we are out, telling anyone who gets too close that you are her little sister and gives you a kiss.

You are an A+ sleeper and I don't know how I got so lucky. Here it is, almost 9am and I haven't heard a peep from you since last night at 8pm bedtime. This is a constant occurance as well. You have been sleeping long stretches through the night since you were three weeks old and the doctor kept telling me not to get used to it, but somehow it has seemed to last.

This is going to be an exciting few months coming up for you. Halloween is at the end of the month and you and Calli are going to be ladybugs. Your costume is so cute I almost can't handle it. It will be your first Halloween of course and your first trick-or-treating experience, although I am sorry, but Mommy and Daddy will have to eat all your candy. After Halloween, Thanksgiving is coming and so are a lot of relatives. You will get to meet your Auntie Allison for the first time and she is so excited to see you. Your Grandma Molly, Grandpa Bob and Great-Grandma Bev are also coming to share the holiday with us. They have already met you, but I am sure they won't mind spending some more time with you ;). After Thanksgiving, Christmas will have snuck up on us. Besides your first birthday, this is by far the best first holiday. Although you will only be nine months old and not really understand what is going on, it will be a blast. Calli will help you open your presents I am sure. We are planning on going to visit all of our relatives for the holiday, which means you will get to see all your grandparents, aunties and great-grandparents again.

You are just growing up way too fast before our very eyes. And now with this new baby on the way, you will have to grow up even faster. Sometimes I feel terrible thinking that I am stealing your babyhood from you, making you grow up entirely too fast. You and the new baby (it is another girl I am sure!) will be just fourteen months apart. On one hand it will be so fun to see the two of you together, so close in age, growing up side by side. You will have a built in playmate, someone going through the stages almost at the same time. But on the other hand, I feel like I haven't let you be a baby for long enough and for that I am sorry. I am trying to spend as much time with you now as I can and get as much enjoyment from our time together as possible. We are so excited to give you a little sister, but I worry about you feeling neglected. I never want that to happen, as I love you more than I could ever tell you.

Thank you for coming into my life, for being such a fantastic and loving baby. I am looking so forward to all the things to come in the next half year of your life and before I know it, I will be writing that you are celebrating your first birthday. And you will be walking. Talking. Eating real food. I can't wait.

I love you,

Mommy