Month Seven

Dear Patrick,

As I write you this letter commemorating your seventh month, you are busy kicking and bouncing away in your bouncy seat. As your legs move wildly, you are smiling at me with both your wide grin and your eyes. You’ve had a very busy month, starting with a visit to the doctor for (more!) vaccines and ending with a trip to Miami to visit Abuelo and Abuela.

This month, you learned to roll from your belly onto your belly. Since you have mastered this, you now roll all over the bed and floor. I am trying to teach you how to sit up and you are slowing catching on. I lift you up, put you in a sitting position, and for a few seconds – you’ve got it! – then you fall over onto your side, roll over and look at me and smile. It’s all a game to you, little boy, isn’t it?

Your eating habits haven’t changed too much – you still love your bottles full of milk. At the end of last month, we started experimenting with different foods, which you loved, but this month, you haven’t wanted to eat much at all (I suspect it has to do with your dad going on a work trip and I’ll get to that soon). You close your mouth shut and refuse anything but your bottle, so I have started to “trick” you by pretending to give you a bottle and then shoving a spoon into your mouth. I know it sounds criminal, but you need to taste things other than milk. And when I am able to give you food, you like it. This month, you tasted sweet potato and mango (along with other foods from last month: applesauce, peaches, banana). I think your abrupt change in feeding has to do with your dad going away – it seems to me like a sign of protest, like you are saying to me, “I refuse to eat until that Daddy guy comes home!”

You sleeping habits are the same: you sleep between 10-13 hours a night and nap very little during the day. I wish you would nap more because I see how tired you get during the day, but you are so curious to everything going on around you. Your eyes are always moving around, trying to capture everything surrounding you. It has become that you rarely sleep in the car anymore and car trips used to make you sleep no matter what.

You are also babbling quite a bit: ahhhhhh, ehhhhhh, hmmmmmph. And you have learned the art of manipulation. This month, your dad went on a work trip and we too the opportunity to fly to Miami to see Abuelo and Abuela. Once there, you realized you could “trick” them and get anything you wanted, including being rocked to sleep and being feed outside of your normal schedule. If you made a single sound from your portable crib, Abuelo was there to pick you up. I actually caught you smiling once after he picked you up and when he looked you, you gave him a look as if you were in misery. This, of course, only made him hug you tighter, and then YOU SMILED AGAIN, as if to say, “Ha, I’ve got him wrapped around my finger!” With your Abuela, it was more of the same. But despite this, you were a charmer. Your award-winning grin/smile is a hit with everyone, from family members to strangers in stores.

This month, you went inside a pool for the first time. I was a little worried that you might not like it and would complain, but it was quite the opposite: you flapped your arms and kicked your legs. Nothing bothered you – not a swim diaper, swim shirt or even a sun hat. I can’t wait until the summer months so we can visit our local pool.

You still have no teeth, but you are drooling quite a bit. Every week I tell myself that you will have a tooth by the end of that particular week, but so far, nothing. I can’t wait to see a little tooth when you smile at me!

Patrick, you are the most amazing thing in my life. I’m so blessed to have you.

I love you,
Momma