Seventh Month

Dear Sarah,

This is the month when it has become clear that I have actually spawned an octopus - an octopus who speaks the language of the goat. You are all hands. Hands reaching for eyeglasses, giant chunks of my hair, car keys, the soft fur on Sancho's belly, daddy's leg hair, plates of food, glasses of red wine, EVERYTHING! How can something so small and pudgy move so fast?

When you haven't been grabbing at EVERY SINGLE THING in sight, you've been adoring the dogs. Now when you spot one of them in the distance, you squeal and squeeze me. The only disturbing development is that when they bark you get very excited and make noises that sound like your first attempts at barking. Language development is very important. I'm glad to see that you might be moving away from the goat noises, but barking is probably not really a step in the right direction. Besides, people might think you were raised by wolves.

You're still enjoying all of your usual pastimes. A couple of extra items have been added to your fun list. You like to sit on my lap at the computer and look at photos. You get most excited when you see pictures of your dad and of yourself. The other thing you like to do is listen to voices on the telephone. I'll put the receiver to your ear and you freeze and listen very carefully for a minute or two. Then, you try to gobble the voice and the phone all up.

Of course, the biggest development is that you finally rolled over. You can roll from your belly to your back. You haven't rolled onto your belly yet. Considering that you hate to be on your belly, I don't expect you'll be rolling onto it anytime soon, if ever.

I'm privileged to have gotten to watch you change so much in the past month, but do you think that maybe you could slow down just a little bit? I'd really like to have more time with a sweet baby who doesn't mind being held and kissed all over.

Love,
your mama

This is what you look like now:



This is you with the paper sack that I got you for your birthday. Let's hope you'll always be this easy to please.