6 months

This girl is 6 months old today. Besides reminding me of the need to use an actual camera in actual light the next time I do this, this photo makes my heart swell. I am tempted to go wake her up to take a better 'on her actual month birthday' photo but I have not lost my mind quite yet. I will remember this sixth month of her life as the month I finally, finally decided I love this gig.  This is the month where she realized she would not starve if she went more than 2 hours without a feeding. This is the month she realized she has a dog and I realized that I am fighting a losing battle in this house with that shedding, hyper, jumping beast. This is the month she started solid foods and took to the spoon like white on rice. This is the month she started really playing with toys, able to be distracted from an impending meltdown. This is the month she started taking semblances of n.a.p's. This is the month she grew big enough to be carried on my hip (that realization nearly brought me to tears. nerd.) This is the month she really became a person to us, not just an eating, pooping, squealing ball of baby rolls. This is the month I learned to love each and every thing about that ball of rolls. 

As my friend Melanie shared with me, the newborn stage is not for everyone. If these little gremlins could exit my womb at even 4 months old, I'd so channel my inner Michelle Duggar. Maybe for number 2 I will feel differently, having learned some life-changing things about motherhood. Who knows. Regardless, this is the month where mothering this little squealer became everything I always dreamed it would be, with about a million times more challenges than I ever dreamed, but worth every one of them. 

So, for the online baby book (since, again, the hard copy baby book is a wee-bit empty), Miss Mary Kate is now sitting up for a few seconds on her own or longer with a little support from a pillow, a boppy, or one of mama's thighs ;) She has started solid foods which deserves a post of its own but I am trying to delay being so lame as to post about my kid's eating habits. I will brag and say that, for now, I have made her first few batches of food (sweet potatoes and squash) and am taking lots of crap about barely having the ability to cook my husband dinner but insisting on making a go of homemade baby food. I promise I am not that crunchy yet, instead, I am just hoping to get my girl on a muuuuch better nutritional path than her little debbie eating, diet coke addicted, lemon-heads and red wine for dinner loving, processed food-aholic mother. But I have to quote a MOPS friend's facebook post where she said "for baby number one it was all organic, homemade baby purees. for number three, she just ate 2 marshmellows off the floor while I watched." I have no illusions that this will not be me one day! Okay, back to the milestones. We have her 6 month appt this week so I have no idea what she weighs or how tall she is. My eyes tell me she is getting taller and less pudgy but I'm sure that means she will be in like the 150 percentile for weight and is the same height as last time. She grows more crazy about that shedding, hyper, licking beast of a golden retriever every day and is clearly on team dad when it comes to Monty. Oy vey. She pulls on him and attempts to crawl toward him and seems to not mind the piles of dog hair I find attached to her lips throughout the day. So gross.

I can't think of any other major milestones for the girl but will always remember this month as the one where I started to feel like I can do this. Every day I question that statement, but more often than not, I feel good about being a mom. I know a lot of this has to do with finding support and now being able to do more, get out more. I am getting involved, have started a part-time/mostly from home job and just feel like my brain is working more now. I hope I remember to one day write a post about my hope to have my "own" interests, an identity not solely in my role as mom. As I see some of that materializing, I definitely see increased satisfaction and less anxiety. I'm sure that's no coincidence.

Okay- done rambling. Happy half-birthday to the girl whose smiles I dream about and cannot wait to see anytime after 6 am each day :) And since I have NO idea what was said or read at Mass today due to the squeals of the birthday girl, I'll quote a little Philippians, "I thank my God in all my remeberance of you."