Little One: six month photos

I’m slowly gathering the eating things: high chair tray, spoons, bibs, food stuffs.  I’m tagging, highlighting, dog-earing and underlining my chosen baby feeding books (namely this, this, and this).

But can I tell a secret?

I’m dragging my feet on the whole baby feeding thing.

Here’s the thing: I like breastfed baby poop.  It’s orange and creamy and yeasty smelling, and in Little One’s case, only appears every few days.  It’s the most innocent poop she’ll ever have in her life.

I don’t want to wreck her poop innocence.

As soon as that real food passes her lips, that orange creamsicle poop will turn dark and foul and putrid and oh-too-adult.

That poop is like a line in the sand for the baby year.  On one side of the line, the days of brand-new, sleepy wonder.  On the other side of the line is a hard scrabble toward crawling and walking and talking and car driving and college.  Somehow, I think I can prolong the inevitable if I just keep dragging my feet on the whole baby feeding thing.

Little One has started without me.  (Not on the feeding thing, although judging by how she tries to consume fistfuls of my hair any chance she gets to grab a stray lock, she’d gladly chow down on a spoon like the day before yesterday.)  She’s started crawling.

Currently, she can spin herself in circles or launch forward a foot or two.  She spends a great deal of time up on her hands and knees, rocking back in forth, or on her stomach with arms and legs windmilling.  If wishing could make it so, this Little One would be creeping everywhere.

She yells when she’s frustrated.

She gets frustrated easily.  When trying to crawl.  When trying to move the toys on the Exersaucer that are firmly anchored down.  When needing to be picked up.

Our pediatrician laughed when he saw her antics at her six-month appointment.  “You have the boy version of a girl here,” he chuckled.  My little tomboy just drooled on him, unimpressed with his assessment since she was currently trying to crawl over and yank his pumpkin tie from around his neck.

In the magical, timeless moments following her birth, Little One did some serious world gazing.  She memorized faces of her beloved family members.  She locked eyes with me,  with Big Friend,  with Meme.  She was an old soul in a brand new baby body.  She’s no less aware today.

At six months old, Little One reminds me of a wind-up doll.  I get to hold her in my hands for a precious few moments, then release her, let her mechanics do what mechanics do, and watch her comical and independent progress around the world.  She’s got thoughts and drive and charisma, and I’m cheering from the sidelines.

So forgive me if I’m going to fold the pile of bibs one more time or run the spoons through the dishwasher again just in case and find a few other ways to drag out the initiation to real foods.  I’m holding my ticking little wind-up doll for a few moments longer before she explodes out of my grasp onto adventures of her own.

Six months old is too great a joy to be quickly overlooked.