12 Months

Dear Elle,

Yesterday you turned one year old. You are certainly growing up fast but when I think back to all the things you have accomplished in one year, it's been an amazing and very full year. Last weekend we moved over to the house on the lake and what a day that was. You learned to walk in almost the exact moment that Daddy threw out his back and couldn't get off the floor. For two days he laid on his back while we moved around him and while you walked and walked and stepped over him and kept walking because you weren't about to let him get in your way. A few days before that you started taking a few steps at a time and then you would fall or grab onto the couch or coffee table or our bench seat at our old house. And within 2 days you were fully walking, taking 15 or more steps at a time, and shortly after that you adding clapping and talking while you walk and then just yesterday you were looking at pictures on my Iphone while you were walking around. World, lookout.

On your birthday we had a huge birthday pizza party for you at a restaurant and all your little friends and family were there. Nana and Papa made the trip down from NY just for your special day and it was a pretty big deal. Grandma played some songs for you and your friends on her guitar and Uncle Paul and Auntie Traci put on a little show with puppets and helped to make a band by handing out some tambourines and drums to all the little kids. You thought it was pretty fun to see your very own Grandma up there singing songs just for you guys. I heard you telling Amanda and Jilly in your own baby talk, 'Yeah, I totally know her.' Amanda was into shaking her sillies out at the time but she smiled and nodded letting you have your moment of glory, I mean, it was your birthday and everything.

We got you some big balloons (which you love, by the way, and the other day we were out shopping and i let you hold a giant bunch of them which you promptly let go up to the ceiling of the store while yelling woooooooo and then we just nonchalantly pushed our cart away, fleeing from the scene while we giggled but then you realized that you lost your purple balloons so you were kinda mad so i got you some for your birthday.) Yesterday at your birthday party you had your very first cupcake and you really didn't love it like I thought you would. Apparently I don't know everything. I had imagined you would go face first into the hot pink frosting, eating up all the sugary goodness and squealing about this fantastic baked masterpiece but you just rolled the cupcake from hand to hand examining all the different surfaces of this strange little ball of cake with the very sticky top and then I thought I would help you by cutting it into a few pieces so you could taste it, but Noooooo, that was the very wrong thing to do and you let me and everyone know by screaming and screaming at the fact that I broke your very special cupcake. World, lookout.

You are saying a few words pretty clearly now, like Dada and Night Night and socks. I think you say ball and sometimes you say something that sounds like ut-oh. You don't say mama yet but that's okay. I'm waiting for it.

The other day you were saying goodbye to Grandpa and I told you to blow him a kiss and you did for the first time and he almost fell down and let his heart pour out like maple syrup onto the sidewalk. He was so happy, i could see in his face that he loves you so much and his heart had just melted and was all gooey inside his chest.

You have brought so much love into our lives and into our hearts in a way that I could never imagined before I met you. Every time you reach out to me for a hug or take my finger to take me on a walk or giggle because I said something silly that you think is funny I know you were meant just for us and I was meant to be your mommy. We didn't realized how much we were missing, until we had you.

Happy First Birthday, Elle!
Love,
Mommy

11 months

A few days ago you turned 11 months. In the last month you have started to communicate with us, using your signs and pointing at things. You can wave hello and goodbye and sometimes you do it with both hands. You bend your left hand at the wrist and bob it up and down and you bend the fingers on the right hand, curling them in and out. You have got waving covered. Today you did the sign for "more" which i have been showing you every day for the last few weeks. When you eat all the food on your highchair tray you kind of bang your little fist together and sometimes you get your fingertips to touch. It's so cute. You can walk around holding onto one of our hands and you have taken several steps in a row, gaining more and more confidence as the days go by. Today was an unseasonably warm day, 78 degrees in march, so we put on our shorts and we went down to the center of glastonbury and walked around, you just love checking out the sites and walking and walking. we stopped for some frozen yogurt and you had a little taste of banana froyo and you shook your head no no no no, but then came back for another bite. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe you got a little brain freeze?

You have started drinking out of sippy cup straws and juice boxes which is exciting because we are going to help you give up your bottle in the next month. You are eating almost everything now, mac and cheese, waffles, eggs, bananas, yogurt, sweet potato and you love broccoli and cauliflower. You love to smear it all over your hair and your face and last night when I was giving you a bath, there were green tops of broccoli floating around.

In a week and a half we will be waving goodbye with both hands to our house on Needletree Lane and moving all the way to the other side of the state on the lake while we build our new home. We have been busy packing and you have been "helping" by climbing into all the boxes and popping your little head out the top like a groundhog and then throwing all the clothes all over the place.

Everyday while we are out doing things together, many people stop me to tell me how adorable you are. Like I didn't already know. And it's lots of people, you are so incredibly cute, you draw people into your orbit like the sun. Look at those cheeks, they say. What a pretty little lady you are. Those eyes are just amazing. You usually smile and wave like a little princess. And then you are off, walking, waving goodbye and learning about the world, you don't mean to be rude, you just you don't have time to stand around talking about how cute you are. There is a whole big world out there and you are curious about everything.

The other day we were talking to Nana and Papa on the Ipad and you kept trying to flip it down so you could look behind it, trying to find them, thinking that they would be there. You are so smart. You are only 11 months old and you already are questioning how everything works. You know how to shake the maracas at music class and last week you were hammering away on a metal xylophone. You are learning about everything and everyday i get to watch your face as you discover something surprising or silly or unexpected.

Today you started to cry because you somehow banged yourself in the face with your little barbie jeep. I picked you up and started yelling at the jeep, saying, that jeep is a bad bad jeep, and why did it have to do that to you and it was such a bad jeep and i was very angry with it and you were laughing so hard. every time I said it you laughed hysterically even though you knew i was going to say it. I think you just liked that someone was in trouble and it wasn't you. And that your mommy had your back, and i do, no matter what.

Love,
Mommy

8 Months

Ouch. Ouch! Ouuuuch! That might be your first word since you hear it so much. You are still pulling hair and now you have TWO teeth on the bottom and you like to bite! You are also a master scratcher, you love to grab ears or noses or neck skin and just dig in with your little nails. When you wake up in the morning either your dad or i go in to get you and bring you to our bed to play for a bit and we basically just say "OW!" the whole time while you wiggle and crawl over our faces and huck your toys everywhere and dad even said you shoved your pinky finger up under his eyelid and scratched his lid from the INSIDE. Who does that? You, that's who!

This week you turned 8 months old and have added a bunch of tricks to your repertoire. You can crawl everywhere and you are getting very fast. We had to put up baby gates and put safety latches on the bottoms drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms. Yesterday you crawled under our big wood coffee table and turned back to look at me as you were asserting your independence, like, look at me mom, I am just out of your reach and I like it that way, and I said, 'Elle, please come back', and you just smiled and kept on going your own way, like, 'um, no thanks, mom'. I am very nervous for when you grow up. :)

Last week we had a play date with a little girl named Lily who lives across town and she is very busy and active and pulls up on stuff and when we got home, I put you in your bed for a nap and when I came back a few minutes later you were standing up in your crib, holding onto the side and smiling! You learned it from your friend!
We had to lower the crib mattress so you don't fall out and in the last few days you have started to pull up on anything you get your hands on, your toy basket, my leg, the kitchen stools. I bet you will be walking by the time you are 10 months!

You are eating all types of grown up foods, grapes, bananas, peas, prunes, turnips, apples, oats and today i bought you some gluten free waffles that we are going to try. You have been eating puffs for about a month and you are funny when you eat them because they always end up on the end of your nose and you look at us all serious like and we can't help to crack up. Today you had two on your nose and one on your cheek!

This weekend is Christmas, your very first one. We have a giant tree up, our biggest ever, in honor of you, (your Dad picked it out, don't ask) and I spend a lot of time trying to keep you away from the bottom of it. It's so sparkly and there are such good ornaments dangling from it, I know you can't help but want to play with it. You already got a few ornaments for your own personal collection that you will have for your own tree when you get married and move out of our house.

Nana and Papa are coming to see you and stay with us on Christmas eve which is a big deal since they have never stayed with us on Christmas eve in all the 11 years that your dad and I have been together. You haven't met Max and Izzy yet and you are going to love those big furry goldens! But, no, we can't have a dog just yet. You have to be old enough to help take care of it, and dogs don't appreciated being scratched and bitten. They bite back!

You are the sweetest most beautiful thing in our lives and we are so thankful for you everyday. We have great days together, me and you. I can make you laugh so hard, sometimes you just laugh and laugh and then I laugh and give you a big hug and a big kiss, and you usually bite my nose and pull my hair, but i don't care. As long as I get to be close to you.

Merry First Christmas,
Love,
Mommy

Month 5

Dear Helena,

Next week you are turning 5 months old. You have mastered eating baby veggies and you just love sweet potatoes and squash. We tried out carrots yesterday which i think you aren't really crazy about. I mean, who is? They are carrots and they kind of just stick around in your mouth, long after you wish they weren't there anymore.
You can pass toys back and forth with your hands and you are getting really skilled at rolling all around. You have a little dolly that you play with and try to eat and it's so cute because it looks like you are trying to give her a hug.

Last week we got hit with a bad hurricane named Irene and we lost power for 5 days. We packed up Mommy's car and went to live with Grandma for a few days so we could take baths and wash bottles and watch tv and play on the computer. Daddy came too, after he got done working. You and I slept in mommy's room that she lived in as a little girl and I think you really liked it at Grandma's house. She plays the piano for you and reads you lots and lots of books. Auntie Traci and Uncle Paul were there too, and we had big family dinners every night and you sat right up at the table with everyone and sucked on your toes and told us stories and made our hearts burst with happiness that you have come to join our family.

Everyday I can see your personality starting to emerge and you are beginning to show us who you are. You have an activity center that has a little lion puppet on it and i was using it to talk to you in a silly lion voice and then i said something to you in my regular voice and you looked at me with this face like, "mom, you are embarrassing me in front of the lion!" I am sure that is only the first of a trillion times i will embarrass you, but I will really try to not do or say dorky things in front of your friends. I promise.

The biggest news I have to tell you is that for the last few nights you have slept all the way through the night, from 7 to 7. At first your Daddy and I were shocked that you just decided you were too grown up to get up for a midnight snack, but the next night we were so proud of you. "She did it!" we would say. We have waited a long time to be able to sleep through the night cause we were kind of tired from all the night activities, but as soon as you stopped waking up, we missed you.

Love,
Mommy

4 months

Dear Helena,
This week you turned 4 months old. We've stopped counting your age in weeks and I can barely handle how grown up it makes you seem. If it were up to me I would count your age in weeks forever, but it might look a little silly to see "Happy Birthday Week 1173!" on your birthday cake. You have started to do some very new things this month, just when I started to get used to the old things. When I read you books at bedtime you look at the left page first and then the right, as if you were following along with the words on the page. If I linger too long on one of the spreads, you look up at me with those big brown eyes and give me a slow blink with those curly lashes, nudging me to turn the page.

You have officially found your toes and you can grab them with your hands into a perfect yoga toe lock. You can stand up with support and you have rolled over a bunch of times from your back to your tummy. You are very interested in holding hands with me and daddy when we feed you your bottle, you like to grab onto a finger or just feel around on the backs of our hands. You like to lie on your tummy and reach out for toys and stuff, you can hold your head up at 90 degrees, you are so strong. You have started teething, you are drooling all the time and you want to put everything in your mouth. Including mommy and daddy's face.

Yesterday you had your 4 month doctor's visit and you weigh 17.1 pounds and are 27 inches long. You got 2 shots and you only cried for a minute until I picked you up off that crinkly paper and then you just looked around mostly annoyed but already over it. You don't hold grudges, I can tell that about you already.

Like tonight, we spoon fed you rice cereal for the first time ever. You took a tiny lick and then pushed it all out of your mouth with your tongue, bite after bite. It was all over your dress and mommy's lap, but then we got ready for bed and you kept laughing hysterically when I would get really close to your face and whisper, "daddy goes poopy". You already moved on from the those moments right before when you were sitting in soggy rice cereal. See, no grudges.

Your hair is growing in so nicely, it fell out a little in the last few weeks. You have a little cowlick in the back of your head, your hair makes like a little swirl which is easy to see because your hair is so short right now. Auntie Traci calls you, "soft serve".

Two weeks ago, Mommy made the decision to not go back to her job as a web designer but instead to stay home with you and watch you grow up. It really wasn't a hard decision to make, you are the best boss anyone could ever have, and even though you sometimes scream in my face and are indecisive and unclear about what you need, you also give me the warmest hugs and fall asleep with your head on my breast and your hand on my heart, which is illegal in most offices if I remember the corporate company policy correctly.

Love,
Mommy