Dear Eleanor… Eight Months

Dear Eleanor,

Oh Blossom – how you’re blooming! You are our not-so-little ‘hippo’ – 8 months old now and 10.12kg, you’ve left 00 clothes long ago and it’s making Mummy a bit sad thinking of buying you size 1 clothes for Winter…in the big kids section! It seems growing is your absolute favourite pastime. That, and sitting and playing. Just after Christmas you fully mastered sitting, and you thought you were so clever! It was a whole new way for you to experience the world around you. You would sit, look around the room and squeal with delight that you were sitting! Big and proper. I never realised how much of a big leap it was, this sitting business. One day you were lying on the floor like a baby, the next sitting up like a big girl! And playing, you have really started to play with your toys, Eleanor. You love ice-cream containers and Mummy’s spatulas most (of course). You pick things up, turn them over in your chubby little hands, look at them this way and that, put them in your mouth (always), pull them out, tilt your head and look again, sometimes you’ll squeal at them, wanting them to do something back, but often you just sit and observe. Always observing. Our placid Blossom, sitting back, watching, waiting, taking things in before you pass your judgement. You are measured and careful, not overly cautious or shy, you just like to think things through, we can see the cogs turning in your precious mind before you give too much away. You hold your cards close baby girl, and that’s ok, Mummy is just the same.

You had your first Christmas with your big doting cousins, you ate far too much wrapping paper, much to your delight, and received many beautiful gifts from Grandi, Mumma and Opa, Aunty Creina and Uncle Russell – all your favourites! And Santa too, the big bloke in red visited you for the very first time!

On Christmas night at Mumma and Opa’s you slept from 7pm-7am, you must’ve been pooped from all that partying. In fact, around Christmas time you started sleeping through the night nearly every night – hurruh! You were very clever at putting your dummy back in, now two months later when I put you in your cot you reach above your head to grab ‘Carrots’ (lucky he’s got such long arms and ears to feel for him!) and then in your other hand you grab your dummy and put it in yourself. Such a big girl, you hardly need me at all! At 6-7 months old you were still waking up about every third night, at 3-4am, so Mummy would feed you and you would sleep in until 7.30-8am. If you didn’t wake up overnight you would wake up earlier, Mummy much prefers to feed you overnight and have a sleep-in! Now you’ve stopped waking up at all, such a milestone, but Mummy does miss those feeds, just you and me Blossom, in the dark in your room. I just thought the other day how we hadn’t done that in awhile, and realised we might not ever do it again.

But with the growing-up comes new challenges… you are just cutting your first tooth! Finally, after months and months of telling each other and everyone that ‘she’s teething’ – it seems you actually are! We can feel a jagged little edge of your front tooth just bursting through your poor little gum. It has been like that for a week now though, baby girl, and still not properly out yet. Last night you cried a bit, very unusual and unlike a cry I’ve heard you do before. Soon you will have a mouthful of pearly whites Eleanor, and we’ll wonder what all the fuss was about!

You are still not overly mobile, you can’t roll off your tummy still, and do just like to sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. But nowadays you’re reaching, grabbing, leaning waaaayyy over, pushing your boundaries, and eventually tumbling down. You’ve also started ‘moving’ by pivoting your big cloth nappied bum around on the floor, shuffling along and finding yourself a few metres from where you began! You haven’t yet discovered that you actually have this skill, but Mummy watches you eyeball something from across your playroom and in 5-10 minutes you will have reached it. Just like that! Because you don’t like to be on your tummy still, I think crawling might not be on your radar just yet, but bum shuffling? You bet! You still won’t put weight on your feet though, funny little-footed thing that you are. You go in your activity centre, your jolly jumper and at Grandi’s you have a walker, but still those little feet don’t get much of a workout. You’ll get there. You push backwards in your walker at Grandi’s…until you back into a wall and get stuck, your reverse parking needs some practice Blossom!

Just last week…you began to talk. It’s hard to describe, but all of a sudden your voice wasn’t just goo’s and gaa’s of baby language, it was ‘ba-ba’ this and ‘ba-ba’ that – in a very grown-up girl voice! You say ‘ba-ba’ a lot now, you used to be so very quiet, now everything is ‘ba-ba’. I’m not sure if it’s the beginnings of ‘da-da’ for Daddy, or if you’re just copying Mummy calling you ‘bubba’, or singing along to ‘baa baa black sheep’, or just not much at all. Whatever it is, it’s adorable. Grandi tries to teach you ‘ta-ta’ and wave good-bye. You sort of…maybe…kind of…wave, and you move your mouth when Grandi does, but nothing comes out. Again, you’re watching, learning, soaking it in, and in your own good time will do things at your own pace.

Such a placid, happy, chubby bubby you are, Eleanor Joy. Your giggling smile when you see Mummy or Daddy walk in a room makes us burst with pride. You are just as we imagined our darling daughter to be. Everything and more.

Keep blooming Blossom,
Mama