Dear Morgan,

At this point, it’s a little predictable and boring for me to start your letter by saying ‘I can’t believe how much you’ve grown’. But seriously, Morgan, I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH YOU’VE GROWN! As I was buckling you into your carseat the other day, I thought back to the first month of your life when you hardly filled up the very bottom of that seat and the little chest buckle was as big as your entire upper body. Now, all the belts are adjusted to the largest setting, and you barely fit in it. You’ve always been in the higher percentiles as far as height and weight (between 75-90%) but recently you were measuring at 99% for height! Some people say you’re a big baby, but I prefer to think of you as a HEALTHY baby. A beautiful, healthy baby.

Something I have to mention again this month is your TEETH. They sure draw a lot of attention. We’ll be in the grocery store and strangers will look at you and smile, but when you smile back at them they gasp. I think it’s a little unsettling for people to see such a little thing with a whole mouth full of teeth. (For as many teeth as you have, I must say, it’s difficult to get a picture of them. The only ones I’ve been able to get good pictures of are your bottom ones. But trust me, there are plenty more in there!) It seems like every couple weeks another one pushes it’s way through. And, to your credit, I don’t usually know one’s coming until I actually see it poking through. You handle teething so well and rarely fuss about it. Something like dropping your bottle, on the other hand? Devastating. Having to wear a bib? The worst thing ever. But things like double ear infections or getting multiple teeth in at once? No big deal. You’re hilarious that way. Sometimes small things totally set you off, while other things that I think will really bother you, you don’t even seem to notice.

Like a couple weeks ago when I, regrettably, became that mother who lets her baby fall off the furniture. We had been playing together on the bed and when I got up, I decided to let you continue playing while I got dressed for the day. But before I knew it, you starting rolling right towards the edge of the bed. You rolled so quickly, in fact, that the pillow which was supposed to be a barrier acted more like a launching pad. You forcefully catapulted off the bed and landed right on your tummy. I completely lost it, but you? You just looked around for a second, confused, and then you LAUGHED. I’m thinking this is the worst thing that has ever happened, and you’re thinking it was a total blast and that you’d probably like to do it again sometime. Needless to say, we don’t play on the bed anymore.

You aren’t crawling yet, but that’s not to say that you aren’t mobile. You roll like a pro! In a matter of seconds you can roll from one end of the living room to the other. You also spin circles on your belly and have started kind of dragging yourself forward with your arms, just a little bit at a time. Your dad is anxious for you to start crawling, and although I’m not nearly as excited about it, I don’t think he’ll have to wait much longer before you’re crawling ALL OVER THE PLACE. And when that time comes, I have a feeling that I won’t get a moments rest… ever again.

You’ve recently started to grasp the idea of object permanence. I used to be able to take an object away from you and replace it with something else, and you were none the wiser. But, now when I take my cell phone away from you and try to give you one of your toys instead, you give me an incredulous look like, “You’re kidding me, right?” And then the screaming starts. Because even though you can’t see it anymore, you know you had that cell phone and you WANT IT BACK. You also know where the vacuum is and that the cord is just waiting to be chewed on. Just like you know if you roll around long enough, you’ll eventually run into Dixie and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to pull on her cheeks for a minute.