Letter to Miss Leyba: Month Seven

Dear sweetie,

I know this letter is a couple days weeks late, but I was faced with the choice of spending time with you or writing to you… and frankly there was no comparison — I’ll pick hanging with you every time. So let’s just pretend I posted it on time, okay?

Today you are seven months old! Last month was huge for you developmentally and socially. Here’s the lowdown:

You started eating solid foods. We’re not sure if you dig bananas, butternut squash, banana or avocado yet, but you certainly like eating with us and feeding yourself with your spoon.

You love to suck on strings, ribbons and washcloths.

Everything goes into your mouth. I am constantly repeating, “books are for reading not for eating.”

You have gotten very, very, very good at turning book pages. Sometimes I think you only like story time for the physical activity of page turning.

You sit for hours on your own and rarely fall over or backwards. We’ve banished the boppy.

At six months old you learned to crawl though it took you over two weeks to realize what you were doing exactly. We think you now understand that you can crawl to get places (like towards the kitchen from the living room when I was making Daddy and I breakfast this morning).

You drop from standing to sitting and move from lying down to sitting easily. You are constantly trying to roll over and/or sit up during diaper changes. Now that is what we call fun.

You stand beautifully now with support (i.e. holding on to one of our fingers). You can also pull/push yourself up to standing with one hand… we’ve caught you standing up on her own without any support a few times now too.

You are just starting to cruise the furniture though you’ve taken just a few steps so far.

You are constantly doing the downward facing dog yoga pose. You look extra cute with your tushy pointing up.

You like to feeds yourself solid foods; you’re so not interested in us feeding you. Plus you get to chew and suck on the spoon when you feed yourself. SO much fun.

You are dropped the baby fat and quickly becoming a lean, muscular, constantly moving machine.

You are making all sorts of new sound combinations. This week you are very into ah-ba, ba-ba-ba, wah-wah-wah, ah-ah-ah.

You are fascinated with children and dogs. Adults are pretty cool too, but you LOVE kids and puppies.

Our pediatrician was very impressed with you and told us that you’re about six months of ahead of schedule developmentally. Taking after your Daddy! No pressure to continue on this advanced pace though. We love you no matter what.

And the big news — you now nurse to sleep! THANK YOU, sweetie! We so appreciate it. It’s so much easier cuddling with you while you eat yourself to sleep than rocking you to sleep. Even if you like to crawl onto your tummy to eat (when we’re lying down). Evidently this is the new comfy position. We need to get a picture of it. You have to see it to believe it.

You also quite frequently fall asleep in the car.

You are SO cute!

We love you!

Love, Mama