six months

We are having a very hard time understanding how our resident small person has gone from this:

To this:

Our adorable but boring little lump has turned into a person who laughs, sings to herself, eats vegetables, pets the cats, insists on talking on the phone, and has recently invented a game that consists of simultaneously sucking down a bottle, kicking both legs, and smacking Mama in the face. I am not making any of this up.

And she has a tooth.
Also, there's a slim possibility that she's begun speaking Swedish.
We are out of our league here, people.

M could care less that today is her half-birthday, but we're pretty excited for her. Also, it kind of feels like we've accomplished something, keeping a tiny person alive for half a year. I think we're entitled to a small celebration. Of course, I'm hoping for something involving a cupcake. But I'd also settle for a stiff drink. Parenthood, as it turns out, is a study in contradictions.

Thank you, everyone, for helping us keep it together for the past six months. We owe you.

halloween

We didn't go trick or treating on Halloween. For one thing, it was rainy. For another, the only person in our house even remotely the right size for trick or treating isn't going to taste candy anytime soon.* Unless she gets left alone for too long with her dad and a bag of miniature Reese's cups. 

I guess we could have done the neighborhood circuit and pocketed M's candy for grown-up consumption. In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably exactly what we'll do next year.

If we had gone out last night, we would have come to your house because you probably would have had lots of the good candy, which is to say that you wouldn't have bothered stocking up on anything that wasn't a thoughtful combination of chocolate and peanut butter.

You also would have said absolutely sweet and flattering things about M's "costume," and then I would have had to own up to the fact that not only did I not knit the little bear suit, I only remembered that we had it after listening to a group of other parents discussing the costumes they'd gotten for their significantly-younger-than-M babies. Because until about ten o'clock yesterday morning I was of the very strong opinion that babies did not need Halloween costumes until they were old enough to say "Butterfinger."

Then you and I would have looked at each other for a minute and I would have started shuffling my feet just a little bit, trying to think of something else to say, until suddenly--bless that child!--M would have done something incredibly cute, and we all would have started laughing at her, and I would have stopped worrying about the awkward silence and started wondering whether it would be rude to ask you for an extra bag of Reese's Pieces for the cats who, sadly, had to stay in for the night.

Then M would have grinned her goodbyes to everyone lingering on the doorstep, and her dad and I would have whisked her away home just in time for her to have a bottle and roll into bed before she had a chance to start her exhausted banshee routine. Which is how bedtime always goes at our house.

Hey, this is my fantasy. I can end it however I want to.

*Although she has started taste-testing solid foods. More on that another time...