7 months - Josephine

My dearest Josephine,

You just turned seven months a few days ago, and you are the most adorable little girl I have ever seen. You have rosy chubby cheeks, you smile like there is no tomorrow, and you charm absolutely everyone. Not much has changed in the past few months in that respect.

You have changed a lot in the past few months, though. You’ve been through a LOT! You went to Italy and met your entire Italian family, or at least as much as we could manage in three and a half weeks. Took your first plan flight, and it was trans-atlantic. You charmed all the flight attendants, as well as everyone at security.

When we got back, you started crawling almost right away, always going after two things: a bottle, or a laptop. It was easy to show off your crawling on skype because you’d always crawl towards the computer. It’s really more of a military crawl, and in the past three or so weeks, it hasn’t changed much except that you’ve gotten faster.

Then finally you sat up by yourself, and once you learned how to do that, you perfected it quickly. You’re adorable, sitting there with your legs sticking out straight and your hands resting on them. I could stare at you all day while you smile back at me.

And then you got teeth!!! Two sharp little teeth that came in almost at the same time, I’m not even sure which one was first. You also got sick around the same time poor little thing, spiking high fevers for days in a row and really worrying your Papi and me. You looked miserable for quite a while, and then it settled down into a pretty awful cold, which you still have. You HATE when we clean your nose, and I feel so bad doing it.

You still love taking a bath, it’s one of my favorite times with you. You became interested in bath toys, and go diving after your rubber ducks with abandon. You’ve also tried climbing out of the tub, and have no fear of the edge of the bed or couch. You are quite a fiery handful, and I’m terrified that one of these days we will not be quite careful enough.

You have a fierce sense of independence. You want to do everything yourself, which is why I suspect you started crawling so early. It’s part of your plan to take over the world. As far as you are concerned, you can hold your own bottle, feed yourself solid food, cut your own nails, and probably change your own diaper.

You’ve started eating solid food as well, although it’s hard to tell what you like and what you don’t. You started off well, grabbing the spoon and trying to do it yourself, of course, and you were a good eater, but since you got sick, you’re not so interested. Even now that you’re feeling better, you complain and don’t eat much.

And you’re finally starting to sleep (knock on wood)! It’s wonderful, it makes me and Papi so much happier. You don’t quite have the “sleeping through the night” thing down yet, but I can tell we’re getting close. In any case, things are much better – you usually only wake up once or at most twice.

You are the little sunshine in my life, and without you my life would be so much darker. One smile from you is enough to make my whole day. I’m SO happy you’re my beautiful little girl.

Love,

Mama