Wow, my last post was when baby Penny was 2 (1/2) months old! This may be cliche, but my how time flies. I'm not going to make excuses for my lack of writing here. Priorities and stuff, you know how it goes. I never promised I would be a consistent blogger anyway.My baby is now nearing 11 months of ripe old age. The last 9 or so months have been quite a ride. Every stage of development is more fun than the last and it makes me sad to think it will end before long. But then the next stage comes along and I don't have time to mourn my tiny, helpless newborn because she is too busy discovering her hands and my mouth and her world and it's positively entrancing.
Penny has been on time or ahead with almost all of her milestones, according to whatever the standard is that her doctor uses. She has also been on the low end of the weight curve and on the high end of the length curve. Her head circumference is right about 50%. Her feet and hands are still big.She likes Bilbo (the dog), apples, peas and sweet potatoes, wind in her face, story time, and giving high fives. She likes picking dandelions, chasing the dog, grabbing at my earrings which are consequently worn only rarely, and all our shoes. She crinkles her nose and grins, and wiggles side to side when she's happy. She babbles new sounds constantly, laughs when Bilbo escapes her grasp and leaves her on her belly watching him flee, and howls when we feed her something she finds less than delicious (asparagus). When she's tired, she touches her ear and stares into space. I'm pretty sure she spends at least half of her waking hours eating. She loves food. She still doesn't have any teeth. She says "ah-geum" and "mmmMMMM" and really high pitched "dat dat dat dah". She has recently started to say "Mama" when she wants me. She likes to hold my hand and walk unsteadily around the house or park. She likes to sleep stretched across her crib the short way, so her head and feet touch the sides. She's a cheerful, curious baby who never stops moving.
She is growing and changing almost faster than I can keep track of.
Parenting a newborn made my day slow down, sliding by like molasses. I was never quite sure what took up my days- I never seemed to be doing nothing but I never seemed to be terribly busy either. She was snuggly, fascinating, fragile, and perfect.
Today we went to Baby Story Time at the library. At the end I was standing with a couple mom friends, all of us holding our babies. Penny reached out and gently stroked the head and face of one of the other babies, playing with the ear and messing up the hair. It brought to mind the way we have been teaching her to touch Bilbo (gentle, don't pull!) and was so sweet and silly. The other moms were touched, but I was laughing so hard I almost peed myself. Babies and dogs, it turns out, should be touched in much the same way.
It's hard to explain what it feels like to be a mom. I keep realizing that I really never "got it" before I had a baby of my own. She fills my life and my heart to bursting. Every new parent says this but I really never knew I could love someone so much, so wholly and completely. It scares me a little, how totally I have fallen in love with her. Everything I described about her above is something I love about her, but I have realized that even if none of it were true I wouldn't love her an iota less than I do now. If she were short and chubby and hated food and had no interest in crawling or walking or peekaboo and only said "buh buh buh" and had a mouth brimming with teeth and slept in her crib in a more conventional direction, she would still be my perfect darling amazing baby.
