I spent the first few months of Gianna’s life wanting her to
grow up and for things to get easier. Things did get easier and now I want time
to slow down. It is amazing to watch her grow physically, emotionally and
mentally right before my eyes. Every day she is maturing and learning new
things. I watch her in awe. Not to mention she has literally grown at least 10
inches since birth. She is no longer my little baby and it’s sad. Tim does not
experience her growing up in the same way that I do. I think it is definitely a
mom thing because he is still looking forward to when she is older and can have
a conversation with her. I do look forward to the future but I am mostly trying
to stay in the present moment.
When I felt like I was drowning during the first few months
I had many friends assure me that it would get easier. The challenges of
motherhood don’t necessarily go away but you do get more confident in your
ability to mother and handle the tough situations. I am so glad I had the
support of other moms during that tough time and I know they will be there in
the future when I need them. I hope that we can stop the mom wars and just
support each other because motherhood is seriously tough. Gianna still wakes
every few hours at night and I am pretty exhausted most of the time but I love
her so much it is worth it. I still hold her and bounce her to sleep and I love
it. We recently moved her into her own room which was hard but I was waking up
with every little noise she made and I couldn’t handle that anymore. She is
doing fine and I still wake up pretty easily once she starts crying. I was
ready to let her grow up in that regard but I am not quite ready to teach her
to fall asleep on her own. It is weird that I sometimes get frustrated by how
much she needs me yet at the same time I love it and it makes me sad thinking
about when we will no longer have those middle of the night cuddles.
Gianna is really starting to develop her personality and we
love it. She is pretty outgoing and loves to be around people, especially other
children. It was really great to watch her interact with her second cousins
when we went to Washington a few weeks ago. She likes to reach out and touch
other people and its super sweet. Often when other people are holding her she
will study their face and reach out and touch them. Her sweet little blue eyes
love to stare straight into other people’s eyes. When we visited my in-laws in
Washington my heart overflowed with joy watching how much love she is
surrounded by. Being able to bring another life into this world who can bring
so much joy to so many people is an immense blessing. I still can’t fathom how
this little human being grew inside me for nine months. God is so good.
At eight months Gianna is fully crawling and loves to
explore everything. Her favorite things to attempt to grab are shoes, remotes,
and cords. Of course everything she is not supposed to have. We take her away
from the items and say “not for baby” and we hope eventually she will get it.
We are pretty sure she understands because she sometimes looks back at us
before she crawls towards something she is not supposed to touch. She is very
talkative and loves when you talk to her in whisper tones. It is like she is
saying “yes you speak my language”. She is generally a pretty happy baby but
gets fussy when she is tired or is repeatedly not able to grab the things she
wants. It is fun watching her learn to play especially when she plays peek a
boo by lifting a blanket over her head. Another thing she enjoys is crawling
over us when we lay on the floor.
Another fun development has been watching her learn to eat
and feed herself. We started with purees around six months but I was also
giving her soft finger foods to practice feeding herself. She barely got
anything to her mouth but she enjoyed the challenge and it allowed us to eat
dinner without her fussing. In the past few weeks she has really been doing
great and we are giving her lots of different things to try. She can eat pasta,
bread, pears, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, spaghetti etc. A lot of food
still ends up in her high chair but she is probably eating about 50% of it now.
I love watching her enjoy eating her food and how much better she is at eating
things now. I would definitely recommend starting finger foods early because at
eight months she is already eating some of the same foods we eat for dinner and
it’s awesome.
I am sorry if this seemed like bragging but I am just so
amazed and excited about my daughter growing up and the adventures that
parenthood brings. If you are feeling overwhelmed in those first few months of
parenthood it definitely does get easier!
