SiiiiiiiX Months Old

I never thought this day would come. Stella the six month old. I remember looking at a friend's baby blog and thinking that it would take three years for Stella to turn six months. The notion that Stella would one day sit up by herself or giggle or lose her incredulous amount of jet black hair or swallow real food seemed impossible. But here she is, as chirpy and mobile and constipated as any other six month old.

Her smile is as big as her jaw lets it go and she uses it whenever she pleases to whoever she pleases. Sometimes her grin is of the cheeky nature, with her dimples bursting and her lips slightly pursed, but usually its wide and full of uncorrupted hope. And just when you think her beam couldn't get any bigger, a wind blows down Main Street and her mouth opens just a crack wider, as if she believes the wind is trying to feed her mashed up banana or watered down droplets of squash.

Her laugh comes and goes much less frequently than her smile, which inevitably makes it even more profound and sweet than her fifty times an hour grin. We still drop everything when she bursts out, and after six months, lets face it, there isn't as much running frantically to see her do something as there was in week two when she would move her leg or blink. She seems to only let it go when she's in that perfect state of tiredness, where you can laugh and cry in the same minute. We kiss her ribs and hold her arms up in the air and she giggles and screams until we're laughing so hard we can't keep up.

Happy six months my little Stella bella.