Natalia's six month letter

Dear Natalia,
Today you are six months old! You marked your half-birthday with a rather unfortunate milestone - your first big fall. You were balancing on Mama's legs this morning as she lay on her back on the bed, having lots of fun, when Mama got distracted by your brother, who was lunging towards her. Before you knew it, you were flying through the air. You fell off Mama, off the bed, and finally landed on the carpet. Chaos ensued. You screamed, Mama and Mommy lunged for you, and Mateo started crying because you were crying. Luckily, you turned out to be just fine. Thank goodness for baby flexibility! However, Mama feels terrible about it and is very glad your memory of the experience lasted only about five minutes.

Anyway, other than that, your half-birthday has been quite a nice day. We're going on a week of being snowed in and we've had lots of nice family time as a result. Today, we did some house projects in the morning and then took a hike in the snow in the afternoon. We took you and your brother to a local pizza place and ate an early dinner before heading home.

That brings us to the first thing your mommies have noticed about you in your sixth month. You are fascinated by the world around you. You've started to show interest in our kitty and are always trying to grab her. In fact, you're always trying to grab everything! If you can see it, you want to grab it. Utensils, paper, toys, bowls, rattles, clothes, Mama's glasses, hair, your brother, and everything else under the sun are now fair game for grabbing.


You're starting to get into little games like peek-a-boo. You laugh at that and lots of other things. You can be quite serious a lot of the time, but when something strikes you funny, you let us know. The other day, we were playing with one of Mateo's friends and came up with this random made-up game where he would run around in a circle and every time he got to Mama, she would yell "BOO!" as loud as possible while shaking a stuffed reindeer at him. This went on and on because you thought it was hilariously funny. We've never seen you laugh that hard. And, today, you were cracking up at the sight of Mateo playing nearby. You think he is pretty neat and the feeling is often mutual!


Next up: food. You love food. We sometimes hold pieces of pear to your mouth and let you gum on them and you just go nuts. You've mastered rice cereal, as well, and just tried banana today for the first time. Verdict: good. From the looks of it, you would happily have indulged in pizza and bagel and cheese and pretty much anything else we ate today.

Speaking of food, you and Mommy have reached six months of breastfeeding! We don't know if you remember, but you had a tough time with it in the beginning and Mommy did an amazing job of persevering until you finally got the hang of it. These days, you love your mommy's milk and you have these hilarious conversations with the boob. Sometimes, when it seems like things aren't going quite the way you had in mind, we would swear that you're giving the boob a stern talking-to. We're so proud of you and Mommy for making it to this point!


Things are going well again in the sleep department. You're starting to sleep longer stretches at night again, which your mommies welcome wholeheartedly. Against the advice of every sleep book we have (and we have several), bedtime seems to go best if you have a short nap around 5 or 6 pm and then go down for the night at 7:30. You've been waking up around 11 pm to eat and then, at least for the past few days, have slept through until 5 am or so before waking again. This works quite well for all of us. Keep up the good work, kiddo.

Finally, you are turning into a mover and a shaker. Your Grandpa noted recently that you've been raring to go ever since you were born! You certainly do want to get going. You now can creep backwards all over the place. You have the crawling position mastered and like to rock back and forth, but haven't figured out how to move forward yet. This is fine with us. You can just take your time on that one! You love to stand and jump when supported. And, you have gotten into the crawling position from sitting a couple of times. We're enjoying this calm before the storm, because once you get going, you are going to GO!


Baby Talia, you are just a delight of a baby. You are in that delicious phase where we just want to eat you for dessert. We love your chubby cheeks and your big smiles and your fuzzy head and your whole chunky, babbling self. You are our favorite six-month-old girl in the whole wide world.


Hugs and kisses,
Mommy and Mama