Today, I have a 7 month old.

My dear little bug,

I can hardly believe you are only 5 months away from being a year old. Where oh where is the time going? It seems like just yesterday, I was holding you in the hospital in shock that I was now a Mommy to this delicate, precious gift from God.

You are growing and developing so fast. I wish I could pause time forever in this moment. The moment where you allow me to snuggle you, or blow raspberries on your belly. The moment when you use your entire hand to hold onto my thumb to pull yourself up from sitting. The moment when I walk in your room to get you up from your nap, and the smile you give me just lights up the world, like nothing better could have walked through that door. And the moment you use your tiny fingers to feed me your baby snacks while you laugh and laugh at the sight of the food going in my mouth.

You are not quite crawling yet, but you sure are close. You army crawl around the living room. You are into EVERYTHING! You are so curious about the world, and I love watching you grow. It does make things like feeding and diaper changes a challenge, however. We can't get you to sit still for anything!

There are a few things you are obsessed with, and you will go after them no matter what is in your way. These include: Mommy and Daddy's toes, the remotes, cords/plugs( especially the Christmas lights, phone cord and the cable cord) Daddy's shiny watter bottle and the telephone. We can hardly talk on the phone when you are awake because you are always trying to whack it out of our hands.

2 days ago, you learned to pull yourself up on the furniture, and it scares the crud out of me! The first time you did it, you smacked your cheekbone on the crib railing and it freaked me out. I know I have an entire lifetime of worrying about you hurting yourself. I have a loooong road ahead of me. You now can pull yourself up on the couch, and boxes. You get better at it every day.

You still are not a fan of solids, and that's ok. You will eat them when you are ready. You still love some breast milk, and that's totally ok by me. We have tried just about every fruit and vegetable and every one makes you gag. You do enjoy self feeding, but you don't really swallow the foods you chomp on. Your favorite snack is baby rice crackers and sweet potato puffs.

Christmas is in 10 days and Mommy and Daddy couldn't be more excited. We can't keep you out from under the tree! You are ripping open all your presents. Just yesterday you learned how to crawl on top of the presents to reach the ornaments on the tree (that I purposely hung higher so you couldn't reach them.)

As of tonight, you have decided it is much more fun to stand in your crib, than it is to sleep in it. You aren't wanting to sleep, because everything is so new to you. You just watch to touch and look at everything now that you can stand up and see the great big world outside of your crib railings.

You are in size 4 diapers. We got rid of the pacifier when you were just shy of 6.5 months and you are doing great without it. It was only a struggle for the first couple days. We are working on getting you to drink out of sippy cups, and you hate it.

You are sleeping through the night for the most part, unless your teeth are bothering you. They haven't broke through your gums yet, but I have a feeling they are close. Your bedtime is 7 on the dot, sometimes 6:30 if you had a rough day with less than 4 naps. You are a great napper. You tend to take a nap every 2 hours, and you will sleep on average for about an hour. Now when you're teething, it's a whole other story.

You love watching videos of yourself on my iPhone. You laugh so hard at your videos, or your reflection in the mirror.

You make a "pop" noise with your mouth when you are hungry. And you say, " Mamama" when you want to be picked up. I am not going to be one of those annoying Moms and say that you know that's my name. To you it's just a noise. Daddy likes to pretend you know that's my name so I have to change your diaper. He always says, " Oh, Liam wants you..." ;)

You are so incredible and you are the best thing that has ever happened to Daddy and I. I try to think back on my life before you and it just doesn't make sense. I don't know what I did to occupy my time!

You are growing up much too quickly, please slow down. :)

You are our everything and we love you so much!

Love, Mommy