7 months- 9 years

Holly is now 7 months old, can you believe it? I feel like she's always been part of our lives but I'm also shocked that she's more than halfway to being one year old. I really love her sense of exploration right now. She's so excited by everything she sees, tastes, hears and touches. She is now eating two "solid" meals per day. She is sleeping relatively soundly from 7pm until 3am (after that- all bets are off and she can either sleep until 6am or wake up for an hour or more anytime). She rolls, scoots, slides and swims. She splashes with her hands and feet in the tub and loves to eat her bath toys. She picked up a sort of Downward Dog-type move from Dylan which makes us cringe with the knowledge that she'll be mobile one way or another soon. She holds long monologues with us now that consist of random syllables, "dadadadada" or "mamamamam" among them. Of course, when I ask her, "Did you say 'mama'?" she usually responds with a raspberry noise...

The other thing that's happening is that May 25th is the 9th anniversary of when Tom and I got married. We started dating in July 1997, moved in together in June 1998, were engaged (in Mont St. Michele, France) May 2000 and married in 2001. Neither of us were planning to have Holly when all of those things happened. But I have to say that in addition to being the love of my life, Tom has been the best partner in parenting I could have ever imagined. His patience with Holly and his love for her is just wonderful. Working flexible hours to spend more time with her has been hard on both of us. And of course, once we leave one job, we jump right into another. We're busy bees in constant motion. Every night, we talk to each other both about how to overcome the challenges, but also about how much we're enjoying being her parents. It's not always easy. Particularly right now as Holly's sleeping has shifted and she's decided that the only person who can coax her into sleep is me (besides Chelsea, of course). I have no idea how I would survive all this with my sanity intact without him. So this post...this post is for Tom. Happy Anniversary, darlin!