Yesterday marked your seven month birthday. Seven months! I can hardly believe it. Seven months ago today we welcomed visitors in the hospital during the day and made the journey from Chapel Hill to Raleigh in the evening. You scrunched your tiny features into the most frustrated, most angry, most put out expression EVER and then promptly settled down and slept the entirety of the drive home. But that was then. This is now.
In the last month you've gained your top four teeth. You grew your left center tooth and the one to its left first. You then grew the tooth to the right of your still-missing-right-center tooth next. My sweet snaggletoothed baby. That long awaited tooth broke through last week and you will not be snaggletoothed for long. I miss that lopsided smile already.
The big news around here is that you have tried solid food. I wouldn't say that you are a fan of solids, at least not yet anyway. You tried a little avocado first. We've since given you a little bit of sweet potato and a spot of oatmeal. I snuck you a bite of hummus (from Neomonde - best in the world) yesterday and to say you hated it would be to only scratch the tip of that disliked iceberg. You certainly do not look as though you are missing out on any meals so for now we will take a break from solids and will try again in a week or two. I'm sure you'll love food as much as your mama does someday soon. For now, I'll happily provide for all of your nutritional needs.
You are on the move, my son. For most of the month you have rolled yourself wherever you needed to go. Thank goodness God blessed you with a tough noggin because you whack it constantly rolling all over the place. Just yesterday you started scooting. You are doing a full on army crawl. This morning at story time you pushed up on all fours. I think you were showing off for that cute baby girl in front of us. I can no longer leave the room and trust that you will be where I left you when I return. You long - with everything that is in you - to play with the dining room table chairs or my desk chairs. I will not let you and remove you from those locations approximately 86,000 times a day. Playing on the rug just isn't as fun, I guess.
And speaking of playing, you love to play with your books. Yesterday you paged through a book for at least 10 minutes. That makes my librarian heart proud. You love to play with Petey the penguin and you go bananas when your dad tickles you with the stuffed duck. Your favorite (legal thing, because, of course, the true favorite thing is the aforementioned dining room table chairs) thing right now is for me to tip the toy basket (my parents' 20 year old laundry basket that we absconded with after our trip to Asheville) on its side and let you pull the toys out one by one and spread them hither and yon over the aforementioned un-fun rug.
Last month it was clapping. This month it's waving. You've been content to wave with a tightly closed fist, but this morning when I got you up from your nap you waved at me with your hand wide open. I nearly cried when I saw you do it because I was just so proud. You've been working hard on this new skill; I catch you doing it on the monitor when you first wake up from a sleep and now you've got it! I'm proud of your wave, sweet boy. Good work.
Oh Eli. I could go on and on and on. I could tell you about how you learned to turn your mobile on when you woke up from naps and how we had to take said mobile off the crib this past weekend because you were working a little too hard on trying to figure out how to get it off the crib yourself. I could tell you about the many walks you've been on and your first snow. I could tell you how you are babbling and singing along with our music. But I could never quite explain to you how much joy you bring your daddy and me and how much we love you.
You are my sweet, sweet boy and I love you so. You are such a gift to us. You are my smiley, happy boy and I adore you. I can't get enough of you. Ever.
I love you to the moon and back and twice around Mars.
xo,
Mama
