Another prime number...

Happy seven months, Isabelle. Seven. Why does that number seem so much larger than six? It must be the way we round up to the next full number once we are half way there. You are past the half way mark, closer to a year than to being newborn.



I saw you goofing around in a towel on our bed after our bath the other day and I did a double take. For a moment I almost didn't recognize you. I asked you what you did with my teenie little baby and you just laughed and proceeded to stuff as much towel in your mouth as possible. You're over twice her size, and on very rare occasions I get a glimpse of the newborn that used to be, but the squeaks and stretches and expressions she made disappear a little more every day. To look at you now is to peek through the window at the person you are becoming, at the child who will laugh and run and play and throw torrential tantrums and cry after a bump on the head and come to my lap for just another cuddle.







This month you showed us that you know your name. You've given up on crawling and tummy time for now. You'd much rather be standing anywhere, and although you haven't figured out that you can move your legs yet, you can stand all on your own for quite a while. You also decided that solid foods were not for you. I should have taken your picture at our first attempt. Of all the things that you willingly put in your mouth every day, you could not possible believe that I would offer you something so vile. Each time we try the tiniest lick, be it sweet potatoes or apple sauce, you gag and wretch until the texture has dissolved or been spat out.




You also found several new noises, including raspberries, gagging sounds, and various other guttural sounds I could never in a million years reproduce and simultaneously retain my dinner. You've taken to playing with your blocks, pulling them gently off their posts, knocking them together and tossing them all around the room. It seems you have finally learned about baby gravity, and are employing it expertly.



You cannot possibly imagine what an exciting month this was for the world. The United States elected its first black president. What an election. It would either have been that or the first female vice president. I have to say I'm excited about the potential of our new president to create a gentler, greener world for you, but only time will tell. If anyone asks where you were when the first black president was elected, you can say, Starbucks. We spent the day lazing about as a family and spent the evening glued to the internet for updates.



I'm hoping before you are grown people will come to their senses and stop stripping happiness from their fellow citizens. Among other things, this election made gay marriage unconstitutional in California and banned adoption for unmarried couples in Arkansas, fully aware that gays cannot marry. I cannot begin to imagine your future, but I can only hope that these decisions are righted so that no matter what lifestyle you follow, you will be able to be with the ones you love. No one should be able to take that right from you. Why do we feel the need to regulate love when there's barely enough as is?



You are my definition of love and I whisper thanks to you every night for finding me.

Each night we fall asleep together and I scrunch down with you in the covers so I can rest my nose on your hair, my lips on your forehead. What was once corn silk and then peach fuzz is now the softest of feathers, wisps of angel hair that tickle me as I fall asleep, breathing you in and out.

Yesterday you were babbling away when you suddenly paused, said ma ma to your toes, and then kept right on talking, clueless that those two meaningless syllables could make my heart leap out of my chest. Or perhaps I'm wrong and they weren't accidental. They could very well mean scrumptious in Bellaland. After all, that would be quite applicable to your toes and me.



I love you, baby. From your piggies to your nose, and don't you forget it.

Love, mama