half a year with you

Dear Leila,

Tomorrow you will be six months old. It really feels like a long time, and not just because I've barely slept. You're really your own person now. You smile all the time and you're laughing more and more everyday. People keep commenting on what a happy baby you are, it's wonderful. You and your dad are getting along better too. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see the big smiles you give him when he gets home from work.

To say that you were a demanding baby doesn't even come close to explaining what the first six months were like.  But now, now I feel like you genuinely love me. You curl your chubby little arms around me when I'm holding you, and reach out for me when you want to be picked up. You giggle and bury your head in my chest when I tickle you.

These instances don't really do justice to the change that's taken place over the past couple of months.  There were nights when I would stare out at the water after you'd gone to bed wondering how this had happened. How we'd ended up here, the three of us each seemingly lost and inconsolable. But now you wake up burbling to yourself instead of crying, you splash in your bath instead of wailing, and in return we love you with the kind of love you feel when you know it is being returned.

oxo

Mom