For the last few weeks, Cordelia's favorite thing in the world is to stand up on us while on the bed and reach for our reading lamps. We have two lights, basically lightbulbs on stalks coming out of the wall. Well, Cordelia can grab them. She can hold one with both of her hands or grab one light in each hand. Then she squeals and gurgles and makes this happy little cough. One time, she was so happy, her whole body gave a shiver of joy. Jason and I melted. It is the funniest, cutest thing to watch. Sometimes she spies them from across the room and gets excited just thinking about grabbing them.
At 5 months, Cordelia has also become super aware of the cats. She gets excited when she sees them across the room and starts waving her arms and making her happy sounds. She likes to pet them too. She seems to get more excited about Willow, even though LBC approaches her far more often. But Willow has been putting up with her well enough. Last week, she was crying during tummy time on the floor and Willow walked up to her as if to say, "Stop making all that noise!" Cordelia started staring at Willow and sure enough, stopped her crying!
((Uh oh, started to write this and didn't get posted. Moving on....))
On Sunday, Cordelia learned to bounce. For ages she has been incredibly good at locking her legs while standing. Lately, she has started bobbing up and down and I call her the boogie butt. But on Sunday, we sat outside on the balcony and watched a man mowing the lawn below our apartment. And she was jumping up and down with excitement looking at him. She jumped and boinged in my lap so much that when I lay her down on our bed, she passed out in the middle of reaching towards her blankie. Now all she wants to do is bounce!!!!! Maybe I should get her one of those jumperoo things.
On Sunday night, Cordelia would not stop fussing! She could not go to sleep, even though she had tons of milk and lots of comfort. We had to hold her like the whole time and it was such a rough night. We were properly zombified. I was feeling a bit down, but then I read some blog post that turned up on my Facebook that morning about how a mom always nursed her baby to sleep and thought it much better than both of them being up for hours fussing and crying. And the nights when it didn't work.... the "Dark Times".... that was when her baby was going through a growth spurt or about to pop out some teeth. That made me reflect that that was exactly what C was going through.
That afternoon, Auntie Donica had to watch C for a couple of hours and when I picked her up, she was covered in drool. We talked about teething and I felt around in Cordelia's mouth. I'd started feeling a lump in her gums a few days before. And even on the phone Jason had said he thought he could see the outline of teeth that day. Well, Donica said she thought that it had broken through. I felt again...... and oh my goodness, that's a tooth! She had cut her first tooth!!!!!! No wonder the little baby couldn't sleep at night.... the tooth was on it's way. It's Thursday now, and I'd say the second one is just about up too. WOW! They feel just a little bit rough, sharp, and hard but aren't big enough to be an issue for breastfeeding yet.
And today, Cordelia is 6 months old. I gave a presentation at school and she came with Daddy. Then we went home and had a bath. I watched a video where a dad filmed one second of his baby's life every day for the first year. It reminds me of the #dailybaby that Jason does. And it had me bawling my eyes out. She's growing up so fast, changing so much, and it just keeps going and going. I gotta remember to savor it, to write it all down, to be able to look back when all the little moments that light her up and make us laugh are gone into the void. Like Jason tossing her lion rattle Alex up in the air and her laughing hysterically. Or how I will be nursing her on the couch and she will hear Jason in the kitchen and pull her head away to look for him. Or how she buries her face in my shoulder and pushes her head against my chin SO HARD with all her strength. Or how cute she is when she is naked on the changing table and draws her knees up and puts her toes in her mouth. Just the cute shape and her yummy baby skin and her bright eyes looking about. Oh the exquisite baby-ness of her. Half a year in our lives and it's still just the very beginning.
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