If she were an embryo, she'd be born by now . . . or something

So. This baby has now spent more time living in the world than living in my uterus.


And while she's got a lot more learning to do about living in the world -- the last week has been a non-stop festival of "No, don't eat the plant(s)" including our second call to poison control -- I can definitely say that she l-o-v-e loves this place. She is a born explorer.

You know that phase everyone always says "isn't it the best" about? The one where the baby can sit and play with toys but is not mobile yet? Yeah, that did not happen in our house. Before she was able to sit on her own so that I felt like I did not need to sit behind her or right next to her she was lunging, reaching, rolling across the room -- aka exploring! Within days of her having the back muscle strength to sit on her own she was also army crawling. So yeah, "what phase?"

Now she's everywhere you don't want her to be. But she is the most fun ever.

I have recently become pretty sure that little A's personality type is the "spirited" baby. People have written many books to teach you how to parent such kids, and I may make use of them sometime, but for now I think she is doing a pretty good job teaching me. She's quite awesome at it.

From the beginning she was a lot of work for us. Of course since she's the first I just thought, well I guess babies are hard work--even moreso than I thought. Then we started getting these comments all the time: "Wow, she is really active," or "She's really excited/fussy/interactive/loud right now, it must be nap time/feeding time, right?" or "Is she always like this?"(answer: only when she's awake). So, I realize now that not every baby is so everything all the time as her.

And, though I have spent some time being a wee bit jealous of people whose baby sleeps through the night at two months, rarely cries, does not get into everything constantly, or even waits to show interest in crawling, etc., I love her so much for who she is (which is not any of those things). She is so much fun and interactive and such a charmer and I feel like she already knows herself. It's so cool to just watch her sometimes. The very thing that is pretty challenging about having kids is also the most wonderful thing: you just can't know what you're going to get. This baby is who she is. My job is to respect that and channel her energy for good. I actually feel very lucky to have this job. It is fascinating, inspiring, faith-affirming, and endlessly rewarding.

Edited to add stats for archival purposes or whatever:

The little shrimp is 26.5" tall (20%) and 15 lbs 11 oz (10%). She wears mostly 6-9 month clothes now but most are pretty baggy on her. She checks out on most of the milestones (crawling, standing, cruising) but they asked me at the Dr. if she plays pat-a-cake, which unless she taught it to herself is pretty unlikely. Haven't really been working on the all-important pat-a-cake skills so I suppose I'll have to step it up. Or give up as a mom.