Six Months and Counting!

A candid photo of me and baby blue eyes. That's a filthy lie.
My arms were breaking and it was all we could do to get a smile
 in a pic that wasn't blurry. You're welcome.

Well, that went quickly. Our babe is six months old. To be more specific, according to this handy calculator, she's precisely 184 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes and 57 seconds old. Fifty eight. Fifty nine. It is terrifying and beautiful how time goes flying by. 

Mine never came out like this, but feel
free to try it yourself.http://www.vat19.com/dvds/magic-christmas-tree.cfm 

It's strange to watch a baby go older, because they change so quickly you can almost watch them grow. 

Did you ever have those crystal gardens, the ones where you stick a chemical-soaked piece of paper in a solution and it gets shaggy with technicolor crystals within hours? Babies are like that, except the opposite, because those things are dusty and inevitably disappointing whereas babies are infinitely and infinitesimally wondrous. Equally messy, though. But I digress.

Six months old...

It's strange to watch babies get older, because they change so quickly but you hardly notice the cumulative effect of all that growing until you wake up one morning and realise six months have passed and the floppy, sleepy little thing that you first met is suddenly so much more solid, so much more a real person, awake and working hard to become herself. 

...and cute as a button. In my totally
unbiased opinion. 

She can sit. She can roll over. She can laugh out loud. She eats carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, broccoli, zucchini, oats, rice, avocado and bananas. She loves the water. She hates her snowsuit. She can say "gah," "bah," and "amah," not to mention "bzrp" and "boob." She can hold her toes and fall asleep on her own and put things from one hand into her other hand and into her mouth. 

Indeed she now can do a thousand small things that we take utterly for granted when we do them ourselves, but that she worked on for hours and days to get just right. 

And she's just getting started. What an exhausting thought. What a privilege to help her along with all the rest. 

We love this kid and always will.