We have this sort of ritual in the mornings now. I wake up the girls – oldest first who then joins me to wake up the youngest. We walk into her nursery and most mornings her head pops up at the sound of us entering and she smiles her famous smile until the dimples show up, and we pick her up out of bed and wonder how we waited so long to see her again.
Yes, that’s you I’m talking about. The wonder baby who fell asleep last Thursday night on the five hour trip to her grandparents, and continued sleeping through the next five and a half hours that we spent on a stretch of closed interstate highway. We were less than twenty miles from their house and warm beds and we couldn’t go forward and we couldn’t go backward – all we could do was to wait for a spot to get by the heartbreaking scene on the road in front of us. We showed up at their house just before dawn, and you woke up in your car seat with big smiles and sweet laughs and hugs all around, and we laid you back down in a strange crib in a room already full of the morning light and you let us sleep for almost three more hours because we needed it and you didn’t mind a bit. You rarely mind a bit, about anything, unless the spoon scrapes the bottom of the bowl and there’s no more left of the lunch you were really enjoying. You wake up smiling, you lay down smiling, you make us smile until our cheeks hurt and we like it and beg for more.
You are eight months old today, old enough to enjoy the building of blanket forts around you – like the one I found you under this morning – but young enough to not yet be able to escape them. Old enough to initiate a game of peekaboo or stand up straight – but young enough to still curl into a nighttime ball of cuteness, the one we can’t stop watching, the one the rest of us gather around to see. Happy birthday, sweet sweet girl.
You are eight months old today, old enough to enjoy the building of blanket forts around you – like the one I found you under this morning – but young enough to not yet be able to escape them. Old enough to initiate a game of peekaboo or stand up straight – but young enough to still curl into a nighttime ball of cuteness, the one we can’t stop watching, the one the rest of us gather around to see. Happy birthday, sweet sweet girl.
