9 Months

Today we woke up to a few inches of snow covering the ground. You didn't seem to notice and as we drove over to our music class this morning you managed to pull off your socks and I think you ate them. You were singing and shaking your tambourine in your bare feet, shaking it like you had been rehearsing for this moment for a long time and you couldn't be bothered by having to actually put on socks. You always manage to get those socks off so I just let you have your way. Grandma tries to sneak them on you when you aren't paying attention and then you pull them off when she's not paying attention. You give Grandma a run for her money and yet she simply can't get enough of you. She has socks that she keeps at her house just in case you get yours all wet while you are visiting her and she gives you clean dry ones to wear home.

Over the weekend you turned 9 months old. You have officially been on the outside living in our house as long as you spent living on the inside, in mommy's belly. You had your very first Christmas and it was very special and you got some very lovely gifts from the family, like this little pink ballet slipper tree ornament with your birth info on it that you got from Aunt Joan and Uncle Bob. You got your first nativity set from Tia and Uncle Pete and you got a Baby's First Christmas Pooh ornament from Auntie Traci and Uncle Paul. You got so many things from Grandma and Grandpa, like a bunch of fun outdoor activity things to keep at Grandma's house, a sandbox and water table, a slide (oh boy!) and a mini picnic table because after all that playing you are going to need to sit down and rest have a fruit roll up and some animal crackers. Nana and Papa came down and stayed with us and gave you all sorts puzzles and games and a giant singing Moose. You were mostly interested in eating all the wrapping paper and playing with the dogs. You thought there were so hysterical. These huge balls of fur that move and roll around and sniff me?! It's brilliant!

Today we put our house on the market and it is a very adventurous time in our lives. We don't know where we are going yet. We have lived in this house for 5 years, your dad and I and we are going to move closer to nyc so your dad can be closer to his work. I doubt you will even remember this house but it's pretty great. We have had a lot of great memories in this house, mostly with you. We have spent a ton of time out on the Connecticut river which is very close to us, and lots of great summer nights we have spent on the back deck after a day of sky skiing and foilboarding. We will miss it. We remodeled most of this house ourselves, the kitchen and the bathrooms, finished the basement, planted lots and lots of bushes and plants. I had a pretty awesome garden every summer we have been here, with tons of organic vegetables and herbs. Auntie Jules and Uncle Adam have helped me plant it every Memorial Day weekend, it's tradition. I hope there is a sunny spot for a garden at the new house!

You can cruise around on the furniture now and you can climb up one step onto the fireplace hearth. I call your name and you turn back and I say, "no, no" and you just smile and go right on doing what you are doing. You are very independent. I asked for a kiss yesterday and I can't be sure but I think you shook your head "no" at me. You may have even rolled your eyes. On Thursday we went to a playdate at the Library with your friend Charley and there was a little playhouse set up in the Children's Room. Everything was kid sized, the little door, the little windows, the tiny fireplace. It was kind of dark inside because the fireplace was just painted on the wall and apparently there were no kid electricians around that day. There were a few toddlers gathered around on the outside of it, peeking in and hiding behind their mother's legs but not you, you just crawled right up to the door and without a second thought you pushed right through without even looking back to see if anyone was following you. You are the bravest little girl I know and I hope you never lose that.

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

7 Months

Exciting news, Elle! This morning you woke up with your very first tooth. Your bottom left. Your daddy went in to get you when we heard you talking to yourself in your room (i wonder what you were saying!) He brought you into bed with us to play and cuddle until it was time for breakfast and you pulled his finger into your mouth and bit down with your new tooth. You are so funny like that, with your physical comedy. Just like the time last week when your daddy came home from work, very excited to see you, and you were just as excited to see him, you reached up and grabbed his cheeks with both of your little chubby hands, leaned right into his face like you were going for a kiss, and then burped up his nose. That's mommy's girl. :)

In two days you will be 7 months old. You can get up on your hands and knees like you are going to crawl, but then you slide back down onto your tummy. You aren't ready for that yet and that's okay. It doesn't stop you from getting where you want to go, you can roll there or scoot or if your toys are on top of a blanket you just pull the blanket to make the toys come to you. You are very resourceful! You can reach up and pull on my hair, but sometimes you have such good vision and motor skills that you can just pull on ONE of my hairs. Ouch! Your dad and I say "Ouch" a lot because you like to scratch and slap our faces and kick us in the throats. Even though it hurts, it's really funny.

We started doing Mommy and Baby yoga and we have a good time together. You like to feel the yoga mat and you love to play with the scarves and you fall into a fit of giggles when I do up dog and then down dog over you, I think you think I'm crazy.

Last week a rare snow storm hit Connecticut which was very early in the fall to have snow and the trees hadn't lost their leaves yet and the weight of the snow and ice pulled down many trees and power lines and left Connecticut in the dark for 9 days. It was the first time in the history of the state that we were out of power for so long. It forever changed the landscape of Connecticut, so many trees came down, old beautiful huge oaks and maples lost all their branches and now are just tall tree trunks. Almost every tree that around here has broken or missing branches, and some of the limbs are just hanging upside down. Our front yard was full of huge branches and it took Daddy days and days with the chainsaw to clean it all up. Lucky for us, Grandma has a generator so we went to live with her again and she was very happy to have us.

Right now it's early on Sunday morning and you are taking your nap, and Daddy too is taking and nap and the house is very quiet. We were going to get together with Morgan and James today but James woke up with the throw ups so we are going to see them another day instead. So now we have the whole day free, just you, me and dad. I think we will take Dad shopping at Macy's because he needs a new winter coat. I think we will also get you some baby puffs that you can start to learn to eat with your new tooth.

Love,
Mommy

Month 6

Dear Helena,

Happy half birthday! Today you turn 6 months old! Right now you are upstairs napping because you caught your first cold and you have been wanting to sleep a lot and lounge around on the couch and not do much of anything, kind of like a little teenager. We went to Mother Goose story hour at the library last week and you thought it was pretty fun. There were lots of babies there and they were crawling around and scooting on their butts and you just kept looking at all of them wondering how you could get around like that, too. We sang songs and clapped and practiced our nursery rhymes and one little chubby baby named Claire crawled on over to you and licked your dolly and I am blaming her for the cold you have now.

Now you can sit up pretty well on your own and you can play with all sorts of toys with buttons that play music and light up. You press the buttons because you know what they can do! And you can sit up in the tub and play with some tub toys that squirt water and you think they are pretty cool. Water! Your new best friend! Your dad took you on your first hike last weekend and you stopped at a stream and you watched the water flow over all the rocks and bubble right by you and you were amazed that you didn't know about this sooner. Did you see that, Dad? It's so cool! You are putting every single thing you can get your hands on in your mouth but you still haven't gotten any teeth.

You love to play peek-a-boo. You laugh and laugh these big belly laughs and it cracks your Dad and me right up. I run around the corner from where you are so you can't see me and you stay very still and your eyes get big and you raise one eyebrow and you watch the spot where I left and it makes you scream when I pop up out of a different spot. You laugh so hard. I bet you are peeing in your pants you laugh so hard. And I am so happy to know that you know just what will happen when Mommy goes around the corner… you know that I will always come back.

Last week your dad got a big promotion at work which means he will be traveling to NYC quite often and we are thinking about moving to Brookfield or Newtown. I was reading the email that they sent out announcing your daddy as the new CTO on my Iphone and you just reached up and with your dainty little pointer finger you touched the tiny trash icon which deleted the email. That is just like you, to so delicately remind us that anything we thought was remotely important is just a tiny little star that burned out 50 million years ago in the solar system of Elle.

Grandma is so very excited that we are moving closer to her, since she counts her days in "sleeps until Elle". Last Monday she called to see if she could come see you on Wednesday, because that's only "2 more sleeps until Elle". We went to visit her today and she sang you lots of fun songs on the guitar and piano and she let you strum the strings and bang on the keys. You got to go in her fancy room, you lucky duck. When Auntie Traci and I were little we weren't even allowed to put one toe on the carpet in the piano room, but you? She'd let you in there with fists full of lipsticks and socks full of chocolate popsicles.

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

Vacation

Dear Helena,
Today you are almost 14 weeks old. Today is also Mommy's birthday and we are having a great day together, just you and me. We have been playing and you have been telling me stories in your baby talk which I think are about shoe shopping but I can't be sure. For the last week we were on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, you, dad and me. It was a trip of firsts for you, first vacation, first sleepover away from home, first time to the ocean. Dad hung your tiny legs just over the water and dipped in your big toe and you pulled your legs right up into your chest, and looked at dad with your "are you crazy?" face. maybe it was a little too cold for you. So, instead of swimming you both took a long nap in our beach tent.

Grandpa and Grandma came to join us for a few days and they couldn't stop talking about you. Look, she's blowing spit bubbles! Look, she blinked her eyes at me! Look and how she holds onto my finger and tries to eat it! To them, you are about the coolest thing since VCRs. (Grandma still uses VCRs, she is not really interested in DVDs or the internet if you can believe that. Maybe I can take you to a museum when you are older and we can look at all the VCRs and answering machines and you will be able to tell your friends all about them because you see them all the time at Grandma's house.)

Grandpa taught you a little trick he was calling "the flying cork". Your binky is on a pink ribbon so we can clip it to your clothes and he was hanging the binky right in front of your mouth and you would open your mouth really wide, as wide as i have ever seen anyone open their mouth, and he would try to get the binky into your mouth, like he was fishing for a baby with binky bait. You played this game with him for a while, and you were making him laugh so much that he almost fell out of his chair. And when he would laugh, you would laugh and we all would laugh, because your laugh is infectious.

Over the last few weeks you have grown so much, you are wearing 6 month old clothes like a big girl and have outgrown two bathing suits this summer! Funny that you wear bathing suits, considering that you don't swim, but we like to put you in them so you don't feel left out. You have found your hands and like to stare at them while you wiggle your fingers and then shove your entire fist into your mouth. You have started laughing, long hearty laughs when something strikes you as funny and when we try to do the thing that made you laugh again, you just stare as us, because you are over it, you've moved on.
Love,
Mommy