Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

Happy birthday! It’s amazing to me that this year has gone by so quickly! I know I say it every month, but you are seriously turning into such a cool person and I love being your mama.

We were busy this month going to San Francisco and visiting your grandparents in Kansas City. It threw us off a bit, but you enjoyed the trips. All except being in the car :( Your other grandparents came to visit last weekend too!

One thing you discovered in San Francisco was sirens. You love anything with a siren! And you love dogs too. There were lots of dogs in San Francisco. And we saw fish at the aquarium. Really you like just about every animal there is.

You started pointing a lot recently. This is both good and bad. It’s fun because most of the time when were out on a walk or wherever, you entertain yourself by pointing at everything. I enjoy telling you what things are too. It’s helping me learn more German too, because I can’t make things up anymore!

But, since you learned to point, you no longer use sign language. I guess pointing is technically signing, but you used to ask for “more” and let us know when you were “all done” eating. You were also really close to signing “water” and these things are very helpful when we feed you. Now, you just point. It’s not that bad, but a bit frustrating.

You mimic us a lot too! We have a routine now, whenever I am getting ready. You aren’t very good at sitting still for a long time, so whenever you needed to be in the bathroom with me you would start getting into things that weren’t very safe. So, I brought your chair into the bathroom. Every time I brush my teeth, I set you down on the chair and give you your toothbrush. Then we brush our teeth together. You have your own hairbrush too, so we do the same while I’m fixing my hair (although you mostly try to eat your brush instead of brushing your hair). Usually you stay seated the whole time. It’s really cute!

You also give me kisses! You aren’t very good at it, but it melts my heart whenever you give me one. Basically you just lunge at me and slobber all over my face. One time you bit my lip! I keep trying to get you to give Papa a kiss, but I don’t think you understand what to do yet. I’m glad you gave me your first kisses.

We didn’t plan a party or anything for your birthday, but there were butterflies and cupcakes involved!

❤ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

The last good day to go to the pool!

Dear Kiddo,

I want time to stop. I feel like just a short time ago I was desperately waiting for you to do something (roll over, get some teeth, start crawling), but now I just want to slow everything down. You’re getting bigger and more independent (as if that could really happen) and I’m starting to miss my baby.

Of course, you’ll always be my baby.

You have figured out how to climb the stairs, so corralling you in the sunroom is impossible anymore. Thankfully, you don’t have much more desire to climb on things than just those two stairs. You’re constant crawling and cruising is enough to keep up with. Yes, you cruise now. As long as you have something to hold onto to get you from point A to point B, you choose to walk.

You talk all the time now too! You aren’t saying words yet, but you say “ga ga” a lot. Papa swears you’re saying “gato” and “aqua”, but it really just sounds like “ga ga” to me. All animals are ”ga gas” too, not just Tobias or other cats. “Da da” is thrown in there a lot as well, especially when Papa is around, but that’s not really anything new. Unless you’re sleeping, you’re talking!

Playing in a carpet fort with Tobias.

That’s pretty much all I have to report this month, Kiddo. You’re growing and happy and that makes me happy too. You seem to want to move to taking only one nap a day, but we haven’t quite figured out how that will work yet. Keeping busy in the mornings and going for bike rides seems to help a lot!

Next month you’ll be one!

❤ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

How in the world are we into the double digits already! It seems like such a long time ago that you were so small and helpless. Now you spend most of your days playing and hardly seem to need me any more. OK, that’s not completely true. You still need me on occasion, but most of the time you are happy to play by yourself.

You are a master crawler! It’s hard to keep up with you, and even harder to keep you contained. If Papa and I are in the kitchen, you want to be in the kitchen; if we’re in the sunroom, you want to be in the sunroom. If Tobias is around, you want to be with Tobias. Unfortunately, Tobias does not share your affection.

On the 4th of July, you learned to pull yourself up. I think a lot of it has to do with the sunroom being two steps down from the kitchen. Two days later, you put me into a complete panic because you started crawling up the stairs. Now I’m not sure what to do!

We were pretty busy traveling this month. We spent a week with your grandparents in the Black Hills. Parts of it were a bit frustrating (you don’t enjoy being in your car seat for 6+ hours while teething – you have 4!), but most of the trip was fun. We didn’t do a whole lot while we were there, because we figured we will probably go out there many more times in your life and there will be plenty of things to do when you’re older. So most of our trip was spent relaxing and visiting with family.

The evidence of Tobias’s “affection”.

You are starting to become your own little person and it’s so much fun to watch you grow! You are getting so good at using sign language (your favorite it “light” and you always make sure to point all the lights out to everyone, although, I don’t know how useful that really is). You are also quite the talker! Most of what you say isn’t exactly words yet, but you are getting very close. A couple of weeks ago, you looked up at me while we were getting dressed, and you said “Hi”. I don’t know that it was something you meant to say, but it was so cute nonetheless.

❤ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

I don’t know what happened, but it seems like a lot has changed in a very short time! You are the cutest little guy. The more things you learn, the more your personality shows and I’m having the best time being your mama!

About 100 times a day we play “Wo ist T?”. You usually initiate the game by putting your arm over your eyes (often times just over one eye so you can still see). You love to play it at meal times, but Papa and I try to keep you focused on eating instead. One time, you really wanted to play, but we told you to eat. You just kept your arm over your eyes and searched for food with your hands so you could keep playing. It’s very hard to tell you what to do when you insist on being the cutest person ever!

You’ve started crawling too! For a little while you would only go backwards and it seemed very frustrating for you as you would oftentimes end up under the couch or sitting on top of the toy you wanted to play with. However, once you figured out going forward there was no stopping you. You could spend the whole day chasing Mama’s exercise ball around the living room. One day I caught you playing “Wo ist der Ball?” and it was so cute. I’m so happy that you’re able to entertain yourself so easily!

This month hasn’t all been fun and games though. You cut your first tooth right after Memorial Day. All day long you were extremely clingy and fussy, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, I checked your mouth, and sure enough there was a tooth! A few days after that you got your second tooth right next to it.

And unfortunately, since you insist on moving around so much and you refuse to stay away from things like computer cables and laptops, we have to sequester you in your pack-n-play. I don’t like leaving you in there too much, because I’d like you to have the freedom to move around. But until you are able to stay away from things you know you shouldn’t play with, you might have to go in there a few times during the day, just to give me a break. I can’t get anything done (ya know, like going to the bathroom without having to drag you away from the trash can every 4 seconds) when all I do is run around after you!

❤ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

The beginning of this month was a little rough. You seemed to be going through a growth spurt/teething/sick all at the same time. We still don’t know if your cold was a result of teething, or what exactly was going on. However, after about two weeks of fussiness and difficulty sleeping, you seem to be feeling much better. And we still haven’t seen any teeth!

Now, we have to watch you a lot closer though, because you are on the move! You’re still not crawling, but ever since you learned to roll over, that is all you do any more. You’ve also gotten really good at pivoting around. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a scare with you. I’m not placing blame solely on Papa, because I should have been watching you better. We have these lawn chairs that Papa insisted needed to stay in the sun room. I told him it was a bad idea, but I let it go. One day, though, you started moving faster than I was paying attention to and knocked the chairs over on top of yourself. Thankfully, you weren’t hurt! You’re leg was pinned under them a little, and you were pretty scared, but after some kisses and some cuddling you were happy and playing once again. After that, I am being much more careful about where you’re playing and what you’re reaching for.

We went to Kansas City for a week to visit Mama’s family. You loved having so many people to play with you. Unfortunately, you don’t have any cousins (it’ll probably be awhile on that), but you get all the attention being the only baby. Your aunts and uncle love you so much.

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

You are quite the talker! Papa has been trying so hard to get you to say “Dada” and you’re getting very close (I don’t care if you say “Dada” before “Mama”, but I want your first kisses). You’ve also gotten pretty good at saying your b’s too. You say “ba, ba, ba” a lot (especially when you don’t like a particular food). Lately, everything makes you laugh, especially things that Papa does. Some of the strangest things make you laugh – like the other day Papa was making hardboiled eggs and you thought it was hilarious.

You finally rolled from back to front the other day! Really, I wasn’t too worried about it because you were so close. Before you always got distracted by something and you seemed content no matter where you were, so rolling over didn’t seem that important. I hope that means you’ll be like Papa. He doesn’t get as bored and restless as I do, so he has no problem finding ways to entertain himself.

We also have noticed that you have blond hair! We’re not exactly sure where that comes from (but honestly, I’m just glad your hair is coming back again). It’s hard to tell, and for a while we weren’t sure, but if you look closely, you can tell that you’re hair is filling in and the new hair is blond. I never thought I’d have a blond baby!

I decided I had to stop stressing out about solid food. Whenever we give you real food, you always demand more. I finally decided to print off a chart and just go down the list; marking food off as we go. You still don’t understand the concept of feeding yourself. You just can’t seem to pick food up and put it in your mouth. I’m torn on that. On the one hand, it’s a lot cleaner to feed you myself, but on the other hand, I have to feed you myself :)

You also drink from a glass now! We tried around 4 months, just to see how it would go, and it was a disaster. I didn’t think to try again until just before you turned 6 months-old, and this time something clicked. I’m hoping that if we can get it down we can avoid buying a sippy cup. I don’t need another thing to have to remember to bring with me everywhere we go (I struggle enough with making sure you have enough toys). It’s a bit messy, but drinking water is your favorite part of meal time!

Unfortunately, you were sick a few times this month. I don’t really like it when you’re sick, Kiddo. Thankfully, the worst of it was mostly a stomach thing that I think we figured out (we stopped giving you eggs for now). You also got your first cold, and you think it’s really funny whenever you sneeze, but you don’t like having your nose wiped (or the sucker thing for your nose). You get very sad when you are sick, and that makes me sad. I like it when you’re happy!

♥ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

It’s crazy how much you change from month to month. On a daily basis it’s hard to see the differences, but looking back, you’re making lots of progress. This is going to be a long letter.

This month we did a lot of traveling. Traveling with a 5 month-old wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting. It helped to feed you every time you made the smallest noise. However, the sleeping arrangements didn’t work well for you. At one point we were convinced you were teething. You were fine all day, but right around bed time you would refuse to eat or sleep. The only thing that would soothe you were frozen teething toys. You have also begun to bite a lot. However, we have yet to see evidence of any teeth, and since we came back home the sleeping situation is much better.

{Your “Holy cow, I just saw a peacock fight” face}

The trip to Arizona wasn’t all stressful. You had a lot of firsts while we were there. You got to go to the zoo (where we saw a real-live, up-close peacock fight), went on a boat ride, tried swimming, and even got to ride (OK, sit on) a pony. Since we’ve been back home, you’ve started taking steps while holding on! You also don’t simply face-plant when you fall from a sitting position. you are able to get yourself up on your arms now. You pivot in a circle for a few minutes before getting tired and face-planting.

You also got to visit with your great-great-grandma! I guess everyone in my family started having babies at a relatively young age (in case you’re curious, I turned 25 three days after you was born), so my great-grandma is still alive. For spring break Grandma and Grandpa drove up here, then we drove to a tiny midwest town in the middle of nowhere and visited with Great-Great-Grandma for the day.

{After 4 hours in the car, you really weren’t interested in sitting for a picture}

Lately, you have been super grabby – anything we have in our hands, you want. My new rule while blogging: I cannot hold the baby. You grab at all the computer cables and mess with the track-pad. One of these days you’re going to delete the entire blog. At the same time, you love to look at the blog. I don’t know if you recognize the pictures, but you giggle and smile every time you look at it.

We also can’t take toys away from you or else you will have a meltdown. This happened at the grocery store, which was super embarrassing for me. I had forgotten to bring a toy inside with us, so I gave you the store’s ad. But then I needed a coupon from the ad when I went to check out, and you flipped out! I swear, if you had been walking age it would have been a full-on-legs-kicking tantrum. Needless to say, I haven’t forgotten a toy for you since then.

We’ve also been enjoying more runs in the jogging stroller. It’s nice to be able to get out of the house for a run instead of waiting for Papa to get home from work. We still haven’t gotten the concept of napping for a long time while on a run, but we’re working on it!

♥ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

Oh my goodness, you are 5 months-old now!

As I said last month, things don’t seem to be happening overnight. However, in comparison to last month You are doing more every day! You are working very hard on sitting by yourself, but you’re still not quite there. You also recognize Papa a lot more than you used to. Now, when Papa comes home from work, You get very excited and giggle A LOT. Actually, Papa gets you to giggle so much during diaper changes I sometimes find myself jealous.

You have become very loud over the past month. It used to be that we could leave you to play in your exersaucer for a while and you would be very content. That’s still true to some extent. Lately, however, you seem to know when you haven’t received much attention and get very LOUD. You like to bang your phone and talk loudly until someone picks you up. [At this very moment, I am furiously trying to write as quickly as I can, because you're sitting on my lap talking VERY LOUDLY]. I think you must be doing it when you are bored, or tired, or wet…basically all day. Oh well…

This month, you also started paying more attention to the story at the library’s baby program. The first time I took you, you were only 3 or 4 weeks old, and you slept the entire time. Now you enjoy the whole program. Your favorite part is the closing song, which includes some clapping, feet tapping, and hopping. I’ve also noticed that you pay more attention whenever you’re being read to. It’s very cute. At the library you sit very quietly and watch the instructor read the book, as if you were in school. At home it’s a different story, but we can usually manage to get through one board book before you’re squirming.

You also got to try food this month! Our pediatrician said it was fine to start giving you tastes of food whenever you seem interested. For some reason, solid foods give me a huge headache. I also refuse to try rice cereal. I guess I figure if I won’t eat it, you probably won’t either. Since the pediatrician suggested it, I felt as if bites were probably OK, as long as we were already making something you could eat. So far you have tried avocado, bananas, oatmeal, and the lick of an apple. I think you liked avocado and bananas the best.

Lastly, we’ve started saying “Good Night” at nap time and bedtime. I go around the house with you and wave goodbye to the house and you hold up you hand to wave too. You can’t quite figure out how to make it work, but you stare at my hand, and then back to your hand, and you can just tell the wheels are in motion. You’ve also become very squirmy all the time…which is actually why I will have to go right now…you are going to squirm right off my lap!

♥ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

Happy 4 months!

Although, there have been some new milestones reached this month, it’s hard to think we haven’t hit a plateau. Things seem to happen at a snail’s pace sometimes and it’s hard to know the exact days/times when new milestones have been hit.

For example: you definitely smile more (especially at Papa now) and you can grab your toys and play with things. However neither of these things happened overnight, so it wasn’t as if there was an instant change.

One thing that was an instant change was rolling over. You have rolled from Tummy Time to your back. Even despite a super low camera battery, I was able to catch his second roll, and you can see it here.

Oh, another thing that changed this month was napping. At the beginning I was fine setting you in your swing to nap. However, you would never nap for very long and would be fussy all day. So I decided we’d work on napping in the crib whenever you seemed tired. After a few weeks of winging it, I finally set up a nap schedule for you that seems to have worked out well.

♥ Mama

Every month I write a letter to T. To catch up on past letters click here.

Dear Kiddo,

Happy Holidays! On Christmas Day, you turned 3 months-old! Check out our tiny tree!

Shortly after Thanksgiving we purchased an excersaucer from Craigslist (the best $5 we ever spent). I wasn’t sure if we wanted one (or the swings we ended up buying either), but all you want to do is stand. It makes it very hard to get any blogging done, when I have to hold you to stand all day. You love the excersaucer!

Another change is that you have found his thumb. At first I didn’t really know what to think about that. People think that it can become a habit that’s hard to break, but I’m starting to like the fact that you can use it to soothe yourself. You usually tend to do it whenever you are tired or hungry.

I think the biggest milestone we’ve seen between month 2 and 3 is that (other moms hate me for this) you now sleep through the night! This doesn’t happen every night, but if you do wake up it’s usually only once. We started giving you a bottle on the nights you wake up. This way Papa can give you a bottle, and I get the night off!

When you started sleeping better we thought we’d try moving you to your own room. Originally it was only going to be one night, but the next day I found myself moving all of your furniture out of our room.

I’ll stop bragging about how well you sleep. To be honest, I was expecting you to share our room until you were closer to 6 months old, but since you sleep so much better in your own room I’m not complaining. It does make me kind of regret buying the pack-n-play though. We could have just co-bedded for the first two months if I knew you’d be in your crib so fast. Oh well, we’ll probably need it for your brother or sister. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky to have two good sleepers!

♥ Mama