Wednesday, March 27, 2013

9 months

My baby is 9 months old today.  She's now spent just as much time breathing with her lungs as she spent  getting her oxygen through that alien placenta thing.  She's no longer dependent on my forcefeeding myself green beans (for the folic acid), and bribing myself to eat salads using avocado, bingeing on cadbury eggs and then fasting from cadbury eggs.  And in spite of her mom taking a little trip down some stairs, getting all panicked about some gestational diabetes, or walking through Chicago traffic, Penelope toughed it out.  And continues to prove herself to be a tough girl through the weekly falls and crashes she takes as she gets more and more mobile.

Now she dances to just about any rhythmic noise.  But especially the theme music to Angry Birds:



She head bangs while panting like a dog


and smiles a gummy drooly smile whenever she sees me.





She gets around the room by doing the break dancing move 'the worm'.  She's learning to wave, and clap.  (Although currently when she claps she is only opening one hand, the other is still a fist, so it looks like she's gleefully threatening to give you a pounding.)
We're working on self feeding.  Whenever I give her a piece of banana or a soft green bean she shakes it like a maraca and then flings it on the floor, staring down at it in silent astonishment, like she's in the blue man group.  Of course today she suddenly felt motivated to begin self feeding without my prompting.  I saw her chewing and jumped to the floor where she was sitting, making my finger a hook like I read in Parents magazine to fish out the chunk of paper that was stuck to her gums.

Even on one of the more challenging days as Penelope's mom, my life is so rich and abundant.  I'm not bragging as if it's due to anything of my own power, but bragging on behalf of The Source of Life itself- which cannot be bound by prediction and is best appreciated when you let go of trying to control anything outside of your own attitude.  What I mean to say is a challenging day with Penelope is still full of laughter, kisses, and goes by way too quickly.  It probably starts with waking up before my dreams come to a conclusion, the feeling of rest and relaxation long forgotten for the next 7-10 years or so.   Every day is sandwiched with moments of frustration when she won't let me put her down ("Can't mommy just go to the bathroom??!!"), and  moments of utter overwhelming love-- the cliche kind that everyone tells you about that you think you understand already, but really don't. 

Every day that goes by she looks less and less like a confused cannellini bean and more like a little girl with her mom's hair and her dad's eyes.

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