Letter to a 6-month-old

To my lovely little Aurelia -

You turn 6 months old tomorrow!  Happy half-birthday!  I can't believe I've known you for just 6 months - it seems like you've been in my life forever.  Yet somehow those 6 months have been too short.  Time is weird that way.

You are a true delight.  I love how your face lights up when you see me, and how I can stop your tears just by holding you.  I love your little crooked smile.  I love that your hair is suddenly all curly (I swear it was stick straight just a week ago!).  I love when you test out your voice and spend a half-hour squealing at nothing.  I love that your ribs are ticklish, and I love how we can make you laugh making funny faces and noises (I especially love that you find your brother HILARIOUS nearly all the time - he can be sitting quietly at the table and you'll look at him and bust out laughing.  So cute!).

You can be the most patient person ever, content to hang out in your crib or play with your toys and while the rest of us are flipping out over one thing or another, you'll be happy as can be.  But the moment you get mad, watch out!  Your intensity level goes from 0 - 100 in a nanosecond!  When you were just born you had the saddest sad face I'd ever seen - that little lower lip would curve downward in such an exaggerated fashion that if you weren't a baby I would have thought you were faking it.  But now - now there's no time for the sad face, it's all about the scream!  Wowsa!  But at least we always know where we stand with you.

For the past few months you've been a bit leery with anyone who isn't me (daddy is okay most of the time, thankfully).  And by "a bit leery" I mean there was a time that you refused to be held by anyone else.  Cried like there was no tomorrow if I gave others a chance to hold you!  You're warming up to most people now, but you're definitely not one to smile all willy-nilly at strangers.  You take your time assessing their worthiness first.  That's okay.  You might be a bit shy, or you might just be from New England.  We'll see how that trait works itself out later.

As for your milestones, honestly I haven't been obsessing over them like I did with your brother.  I'd say you are right on track - you rolled over at an appropriate time, you just started eating solids, you're sleeping through the night, you're just about to figure out how to sit up on your own, and you love standing on my lap or just about anywhere (we still have to hold you up, of course).  You're healthy and growing, and that's all that matters. 

Thank you so much for being such an amazing little person.  You are a joy and a blessing, and your daddy, Dashiell and I love you very much!  Happy 6 month birthday!

Finally Photos!

I'm a month late posting these, but we had so many photos from our Minnesota trip last month that I decided it would be best just to share the shutterfly book I created instead of trying to post each picture individually.  Of course, that meant that I had to actually finish the photo book!  So, TA-DA! It's finally finished!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.

This represents not even half of the photos we took.  At one point in our trip my mom said "Poor Dashiell is going to feel so left out - he's hardly in any of the photos!"  Which, as you can see, was a total lie.  In fact, it seems like Aurelia is the one who was left out of so many of the photos!  Yes there are some pictures of her but the majority seem to be of Dashiell.  Sorry 'Reels!  We'll try to be more even-handed next time.

Enjoy!

Miracles do happen!

Dashiell, God love him, is a very headstrong child.  He has particular beliefs that no one can talk him out of.  He is not influenced by his peers.  He is his own person.  This will serve him well in the future, I can see that.  But what that means now is that he is the most stubborn child ever. Last year he wanted very little to do with water, even in the blazing heat of the summer.  He did take swim lessons, but he never willingly wanted to go into a lake, ocean or pool.  And we could forget about splash parks or sprinklers.  He also has an aversion to wearing shorts and prefers "longs", and wears socks every day and night.  He doesn't like being uncovered.  He has fought us on all attempts at getting him to go pants or sock free, as well as on any suggestions of water-related fun.

So imagine our surprise when he asked to run through the sprinklers at mom and dad's house in Minnesota!  AND he wanted to strip down to his underwear to do it!  I was amazed, and of course encouraged him to get to it!  Since then, he's spent many days running through the sprinklers in his undies in our backyard.  Before it was skull-meltingly hot last week, we had a rather chilly weekend in which the temp only reached the mid-sixties.  Didn't deter him one bit! 

He is thoroughly enjoying his new fire hydrant sprinkler!

After his sprinkler fun he tends to hang out in just a t-shirt and underwear (NO pants, NO socks!).  It's shocking, frankly.  And we love it!

Aurelia and I made a few passes in the sprinkler as well, though we waited for the heat to overtake us before we really tried it out.  On the cooler days Aurelia preferred to hang out in the Bumbo on the lawn.

It's going to be a fun summer!

Garden of your (Sleepy) Mind

We're back from vacation!  At some point I'll post a fraction of the bazillion pictures we took but today I wanted to share a story from last night (with a little background information):

Aurelia has finally decided that she needs to go to bed earlier than we've been putting her down.  Her previous bedtime was around 9 pm - if we tried to get her to sleep earlier than that, she'd always wake up 40 minutes later, all pumped up from her "nap".  Then right before vacation (as in, 2 days before), it became apparent that she needed an early bedtime.  Which was awesome timing, let me tell you - suddenly we had to put her to bed at 7:30, however Minnesota is in a different time zone so she really, really wanted to go to bed at 6:30, which could pretty much never happen.  So there was lots of tears and screaming every night - whee!

But I digress.  With this earlier bedtime we're now trying to figure out bedtime rituals and what to do with Mr. D while putting Aurelia to bed.  When both Rick and I are home it's not a huge issue, but 2 - 3 nights a week it's just me and the kiddos!  So I've been trying to find ways to include Dashiell in Aurelia's bedtime ritual.  We have been letting him read "Goodnight Moon" to her after I feed her, which he loves to do and we love to hear.  Last night while I was feeding her, he read "Harold and the Purple Crayon", then after I fed her he once again read "Goodnight Moon".  Then I suggested singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", since I have been singing that to her before her naps.  He said no, he wanted to sing something else.  Then he proceeded to sing his own rendition of this:



We had watched this video after a few of my Facebook friends posted it last weekend (watched it about 10 times, I might add, since you can never watch something just once with a 4-year-old).  It's totally trippy but I kind of love it!  This from someone who never liked Mr. Rogers growing up (Captain Kangaroo I could get behind, but for some reason Mr. Rogers always annoyed me).

Anyway, D didn't know all the lyrics so he made up a few of his own - I believe he was growing sugar snap peas in the garden of his mind, along with tomatoes and rainbows and steam machines.  It went on for much longer than I would have liked, but it was funny nonetheless.  I can't say that "Garden of your Mind" is going to be part of our nightly ritual, though - just imagine the weird dreams Aurelia would end up having!