braveinlove.com

A year ago, we were just coming off of a magical ten day trip together in Hawaii. This year, we canceled our plans go to a concert Friday night, instead scarfing down some dinner at a neighborhood spot before needing to go home to our sick baby (hand foot and mouth- yay! 😩). Sometimes you are tan and well rested and drinking pineapple juice at sunrise, and some times you are exhausted and barely eking out a few moments to recognize another year passing together. A thousand slow mornings and hurried nights all mashed up together.

(Always a little late to the monthly update party) I have always proclaimed month 8 as my favorite of all the first year months and this one with you only reinforces that opinion. you, smashing handfuls of any and all foods into your mouth at every meal (favorite foods: any kind of meat, berries of all sorts and pizza crusts) You’re trying out all kinds of sounds- having mastered dada and nana- now moving on to ma and hey and double sounds like ah-da. Most nights you sleep 6-8 hours at a time but love to throw me a curve ball with an up-every-two-hours night thrown in every so often to keep from getting overconfident.

She started eating solids and loves to feed herself fistfuls of whatever we put on her tray (my favorite thing is to watch her carefully try to pick out her favorite blueberries amongst whatever else is there to eat). Besides her signature screech, she started making some “da da” sounds but isn’t it using it intentionally yet and likes to make a sound like she’s rolling her “R” in spansih. She’s just started to have a little stranger danger and gets unsure when new people want to hold her (but still loves to flash smiles to anyone who says hello). She’s also started to do a little bounce dance when she hears music that makes us all laugh

I’d spent the six weeks prior to our arrival visiting my OB week every week for “threatened miscarriage ” monitoring and it felt more than coincidental that within two weeks of landing, not only did my sub chronic hemmorage heal, but the early genetic testing we’d done to rule out another trisomy loss came back that our baby was healthy. Those weeks in San Francisco lifted me from a dark place and shone the brightest light on the possibility that we really were going to keep this baby. San Francisco is in her soul, not only because both of her parents love this place with the deepest passion, but because it was here that our luck turned and she went from a whispered plea to a tangible dream.