Take it all in

Maia has started trying to eat her feet. I don't remember Chloë doing this until seven months or so. (She's also in nine-months pajamas, which I don't remember Chloë doing until six months or so.) I don't understand how someone so chubby can get her toes in her mouth so easily, but she does. She tried to eat my pasta last night, too--she was fussy in the booster at the table so I stopped her feeding of pears (so far: sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, rice cereal, oat cereal, and now pears; it's time to break out something with more color in it) and pulled her into my lap, but then she just tried to get everything in her mouth: the pasta, the plate, the tablecloth, my napkin, her discarded bib. In her bath, we used to dip a washcloth in warm water and drape it over her, but now she goes bare because when we try she sucks the washcloth dry, or at least gives it her best shot.

She slept through the night, going down after an 8:30 feeding with a short wakeup at 10, and getting up at 5:30. I didn't get the full stretch of sleep because Chloë was awake from 3:30-4:30 asking serially for a some water, a tissue, her blankets, some nose medicine (Vaseline). On the last one I told her to go to sleep because I wasn't coming back again, I was going to my bed to sleep. I crawled into bed and heard her call plaintively, "Daddy? Chloë have Daddy?"

Anyway, Maia woke at 5:30 this morning and I nursed her in bed on one side (read: slept another hour until the alarm went off), then took her to the nursery for the other. She wasn't terribly interested, even after spitting up all over my pajamas, so we had some belly-to-belly time instead. What a sweet way to spend time on a Wednesday morning: rocking in a chair with a happy baby on me, our skin warm from the contact, the room quiet except for her burbles and my responding gabbles. I remember a time around a year ago when Chloë was lying with me in that chair, and I rocked her and thought, I have to remember this, how it feels to have her weight against me, the soft warmth of her skin, the fine tickles of her hair against my face. There is a lot about the day-to-day of my girl that I forget, but I have to remember this. And I do. And I will remember this morning with Maia, too. It was nothing special--or rather, it was nothing unusual; but I must remember, and I will.