Clara at 7 months

Dear Clara,

You are 7 months now.  Just when I didn't think you could be more fun, you got even sassier!  You have been at school now for a month.  At first, I was nervous, but I think we made the right decision sending you there.  Other than being sick, which I'm told is a rite of passage, you (and we) have adjusted well and seem to have a really good time.  You have your own bed with your own blanket and sheet from home.  You spend a lot of time playing on the floor with the other babies.  There are only a couple of girls in your class, and the caretakers love to dote on you.  They are always excited about your little fake shoe socks.  I was worried that you wouldn't sleep well at daycare, but apparently this is not a problem at all.  Sometimes I come to nurse you at lunch time.  When you see me coming through the door, you burst into this big smiles.  At night when it's time to go home, you babble all the way to the train, telling me about your day.  Yesterday, they gave us a painting that you "made" of a tree.  It is quite pretty and is immediately recognizable as a tree.

In mid-October, you started showing interest in our food.  You would watch forks travel from plates to mouth and back again.  You were interested in looking into bowls and cups.  You tried to chew on bottles and plates.  You tried little tastes of hummus and sag paneer from our plates, licking your lips whimsically and then smiling.  When you were 6 months old, we decided to give you some avocado.  We put your bright red bib on and strapped you into your highchair, a bamboo and plastic affair that straps onto a regular chair.  You were fascinated by this experience, banging on the tray of the chair and craning your neck to look over onto the floor.  You figured out how to manage eating from a spoon a lot faster than I would have expected and seemed to enjoy the watery guacamole that we fed you.  After waiting the requisite several days to make sure you didn't break out in hives, we tried other things.  You were marginally interested in bananas but rejected applesauce completely.  You have a tepid relationship with oatmeal - sometimes it's great and sometimes it's horrid.  The real turning point with you and food came the other night when I decided, just for amusement, to give you some of the carrots that I had cooked, pureed and frozen in ice trays.  Carrots, it turns out, are awesome.  You ate a whole ice cube-sized portion while giggling and trying to grab the spoon.

You have one tooth, the lower right front tooth.  It is barely poking up through your gum and is razor sharp.  I can tell that its mate is on its way out because you are ferociously chewing on everything that goes near your little mouth.  So far, growing teeth hasn't bothered you all that much.  Let's hope it continues that way.

For Halloween, we dressed you up as a crab.  Sascha wore an apron and a chef's hat and tried to carry you around in a big pot.  You protested your pot incarceration, like any good crab would do, but you were otherwise happy in your costume.

In the last month, you have become much more active.  You suddenly decided one Saturday that you knew how to sit up on your own, and that was that.  You only fall over when you try to reach for something that is too far away.  You love to play in your bouncy chair that hangs from the doorway.  This weekend you were dancing from one foot to the other, while singing to yourself, and twirling around in circles.  You spend hours with your father on the weekend playing with blocks.  Mostly he builds castles for you and you knock them over.  You like to scoot around on your tummy, rotating in circles in the direction of whatever toy holds your fancy at that moment.  We watch your little legs pumping and have ordered supplies for babyproofing the cabinets because you already try to open the doors.  Your friend Olive was visiting last weekend, and she was nice enough to demonstrate for us exactly which things need to get moved and what cabinets need to have safety locks installed in them.

Every day, I am amazed at how much you've grown and changed in what feels like such a short time.  I always laughed when people would tell me to enjoy your early months because they would be gone in no time, but now I know exactly what all those people meant.  You are already a completely developed personality, but it seems like every day, some new facet of you emerges.  I am enjoying every minute of it, learning about the world with you and through your eyes.

Love,
Mama