January 27, 2012
Dear Kate,
Sweet girl, you are such a happy little baby! I can’t believe how much you smile and I love that just looking at you can make you so happy. You smile with your whole body and just get so excited to interact with other people. Nicky continues to be your favorite. You love watching him play and are always trying to get his attention by smiling at him. You are also turning into such a chatty little girl. You just love the sound of your own voice and are constantly making happy noises and practicing talking. I love hearing you gurgling to yourself in your crib or to me when we’re playing or doing errands. It’s a great soundtrack for our days! Don’t let it go to your head, but you’re also a beautiful little girl. The number one most frequent comment you get from little old ladies in the supermarket is that you look just like a doll. You do, you have perfect pink cheeks and big blue eyes and a sweet bald little head. You’re perfect!
You are developing a bit more of your personality and it turns out that you have a bit of princess blood in you. Most of the time you are as happy as can be, but you can be pretty feisty when things don’t go your way. You particularly don’t like anything to do with doctors, even when they’re not touching you but especially when they’re poking and prodding. You suffered through RSV this month and we had to go to the doctor a couple times. You did not approve. And you REALLY hated it when we went in for your two month immunizations…nothing would calm you down after the nurse had the nerve to poke you with a needle. You were SO. MAD. In your opinion there had never been a baby more poorly treated in the history of the world. How dare she?!!?! You also really don’t like sudden or loud noises, so living with Nicky can be a challenge. And you can really get going at the end of the day when you’re wiped out and need some extra help getting to sleep. My recommendation for this problem is to get more sleep at night, but so far you are still refusing to take my advice on this point. I’m hoping I can convince you to sleep longer by the end of next month when I go back to work otherwise I am going to be pretty useless. You and I are still up three times a night, like clockwork. Most of the time you wake up, eat a bit, and go right back to sleep but recently you’ve been throwing parties in the middle of the night. Luckily, you’re happy during these parties and generally just talk to yourself and suck on your fingers for an hour or so until you’re ready to go to sleep again, but still – let’s focus more on the sleeping for now and leave the partying for high school, ok?
You’ve made some very fun discoveries this month. You found your feet and you get a kick out of watching them move around and trying to touch them. You’re also starting to reach for and grasp toys. You’re so curious about how things feel and how to move your little hands to get a hold of them. Your hand eye coordination is getting so good; it’s fun to watch you carefully moving your little hands to reach their target. Your favorite thing to do with your hands is suck on them. You are a little Houdini: you can wiggle your hands free from your swaddle in mere seconds so that you can get access to your fingers. You keep getting stronger every day and are now able to keep your head up for a couple minutes during tummy time before you start begging to be picked up. These milestones are coming so fast, before I know it you’ll be rolling and then sitting and then crawling and then going off to college! Yikes!
We had so much fun with you this month, little girl. You are such a joy and I’m so happy you’re mine!
Love, Mommy