7 Months

Dear Margot,

You are one funny kid.  This month has been full of laughing and giggles and snuggles and bouncing and playing and....you're just the best!  You can finally sit up on your own, which means we can put you down somewhere and you can keep yourself busy!  Phew! 

We keep trying to convince you that the jumperoo is the most amazing and fun thing ever, but you're not buying it.  You jump for a few minutes, you play with the rattles hanging from the top, you flip through the little book, and then you're like, "Wait a minute, they're trying to pawn me off on this giant plastic piece of garbage!  Pick me up right NOW!"  You're too clever for us.

During this month you've battled all kinds of ailments and baby problems.  Just this weekend you finally cut your first TOOTH!  I say finally because it seems that you've been teething since you were born.  You have been busy drooling and gnawing on everything you can get your hands on!  You've also started eating real food and you've made it very clear that you do NOT like the homemade stuff I slaved away to make.  Fine.  You're lucky you're so cute in that high chair or I might get mad at you for spitting out my food!

You're also starting to sleep like a normal person these days.  You've figured out the routine and you love your bed and your dou dou bear.  Some nights you practically jump out of my arms into your crib, and other nights you curl up against me right before I put you down as if to say, "Wait, Mommy!  Just a few more snuggles, please?"  And I always oblige.  Because your baby snuggles are amazing.  When we rock in our chair, you lay your head on my shoulder and wrap your arm around my neck.  Now I know to pay attention to where your knees and your feet fall on my waist.  Someday they'll reach my lap, then my knees, then you'll be too big for rocking and snuggling and I'll be the saddest Mama there ever was. 

One more thing, Muffin - your voice.  I think I've noted this in previous letters, but HOLY COW have you got a set of pipes!  You like to be heard.  I don't blame you.  Your babbling and singing and cooing are precious, yet sometimes just a little bit irritating.  I get it.  There's a lot going on in this house and a girl's gotta speak up if she wants some attention!  Sylvia thinks your loud yelling voice is hysterical so she yells too and....well, let's just say Daddy likes to take a walk by himself when the three of us really get going.  You might not know this about me, but I'm loud, too, and that's probably where you get it.  It's okay.  My hope for you and your sister is that you learn how to be loud when you should be loud and how to be quiet when you should be quiet.  If you think as carefully about what you say as your Daddy does, and if you speak as loudly as I do when something's really important, then you'll be a really great grown-up human.  I can't wait to see that!  Actually, I can.  Don't grow up, okay? 

We love you, sweet girl.  Thanks for being awesome!

Love,
Mama

February - So Far So Good...

Well!  This past week was our first five day week of the new year in which everyone went where they were supposed to go and did what they were supposed to do!  Yippee!!  You know that means someone (probably Margot) will come down with something soon and throw a monkey wrench in this health plan.  Speaking of Margot, she's had a fantastic week as far as sleep is concerned, too!  Four out of five nights she slept ALL. NIGHT. LONG.  She can FINALLY be laid in her crib and left to herself without the insane crazy lady wailing she was doing a few weeks ago.  Now, if we follow the routine (bath, jammies, nursing, book, song, bed), she practically jumps into her crib.  And when she wakes up crying in the middle of the night, it only takes 5 - 15 minutes for her to get herself back to sleep.  That middle-of-the-night crying is so much different now than it was a few weeks ago.  It's gone from "HEEEYYYY!!!!!  COME GET ME BEFORE I DIE!!!!" to "Hey.  I'm awake.  Anybody?  Anybody?  No?  Alright, then.  I'll just go back to sleep, I guess."

Also, I want to write a giant post about how different, difficult, wonderful, insanely exhausting, remarkably brilliant it is to have two kids.  Instead, I'll just say this:  I have to remind myself of two important things every single day:

1.  We are not the first or only people to have two children.  Lots of people do it and have done it before us.  It often feels like there are entirely too many children in this house and then I'm all, "Oh wait.  There's only two.  My grandma had six.  I'm a total wuss."

2.  Margot is not Sylvia.  Margot is a baby, not a toddler.  There are two years between then, so Margot will not be a toddler tomorrow.  I need to let her be a baby and stop waiting for her to grow up.  I need to invest in the high chair and the teethers and the morning nap.  These things aren't going away any time soon, nor should they!  This poor baby.  I feel she may be rushed through her entire life.  I'll do my best to not do that.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.  I promised myself I'd take Margot's seven month pics in her chair this weekend.  Now that she's almost eight months old.  Ai yi yi!  Poor second baby.  *Facepalm.*

Margot's Christmas outfit from Papi and Mamie in France.  It's warm and adorable and she's worn it OUT since we got it.  Merci, Papi et Mamie!

Getting ready to go outside takes longer than the time we spend outside.

Sylvia will not part with her bouncy ball from Cici.  You'd think it was the only Christmas gift she received.

Our trip to the mailbox included stomping through every pile of snow at the end of every neighbor's driveway!

Sweet li'l footprints.

Sweet li'l house all covered in snow!

Making snow angels!

She got pretty good at it!

Babies make the BEST faces!  Margot has been eating in her high chair for the last couple weeks (instead of the bumbo), and she LOVES it!

Margot's still crazy bald, and probably will be for quite some time, if she's anything like Sylvia or myself when I was a baby!  Sylvia's hair is getting long enough for a braid, so that's a lot of fun, especially since she thinks having her hair braided makes her Rapunzel. She's no longer interested in pigtails, which breaks my heart!

So here I sit, at 8:30 on a Saturday with two girls in beds upstairs.  It feels like midnight and I'm wiped out, but we've had such a good day that all I can do is thank my lucky stars for those two sweet girls.  I forgot how fun it is to be a little girl.  I'm trying really hard to LET them be little girls without my nutty Mama brain interfering.  I'm working hard to relax and count my blessings.  After all, I'm not the first (or the last) person to do this, right??