Letter to Greta: 8 Months

Dear Littlest One,

What a month it’s been for you! You’re so very nearly mobile, crawling backwards and sometimes managing to get yourself forward, too. You’re getting into a sitting position on your own, even using that motion—lying down to sitting to lying to sitting—to move around. You are making “ba ba ba” and “ga ga ga” sounds, trying to keep up with all the talking going on around you. You love to stand up, and you beam when we put you onto your feet and exclaim, “Standing! Who’s standing! Big girl standing!” Even Lucia gets into it and yells “Big girl standing!”, to your delight.

You have one goal in life: get whatever it is Lucia’s playing with. You have no interest in anything else, anything I might give you to play with. You have eyes only for Lucia and her toys of the moment. You are persistent and steadfast, and though I’m glad to see you asserting yourself, I foresee many a battle in the near future.

You have two teeth now, middle-bottoms, and are growing some hair (fair, still). You are in 9-month clothes, with some 6-month dresses, shirts, and onesies thrown in. You love being in the Ergo and will still nap in it if you’re tired. You no longer docilely lie still while I change your diaper and clothes—you now writhe and scream. It was right around this time that I forewent the changing table altogether with Lucia; with you, too, it’s soon to be a thing of the past.

Your sleeping, dear one, has been atrocious, and the fact that you really didn’t sleep during the big week of the move nearly did us in. You’re back to waking once or twice a night now (an improvement!), but you’ve been waking up at 5:00am. This is too early. You are cute and smiley and cuddly, but this is much, much too early.

You’re still eating purees, but Mum-Mums, too. Soon it will be time to move on to real bits of food.

The biggest change this month is that you are no longer sleeping in our room. You have your own nursery now, next door to our room, with your very own glider for me to nurse you in. It is nice to not tiptoe around at night; but I do miss having you so close, your crib so near my bed that I could fall asleep while listening to you breathe.