Dear Livia,

I am spurred on to write this letter by the happy squeals and laughter I hear from you right now. You are laying on the floor in the study, kicking one of Daddy’s card boxes and delighting in the cardboard echo it produces. Such pure joy lifts my heart and more than makes up for all the crankiness of the past week.

Your sixth month of life was a whammy. Filled with all sorts of “firsts,” it was a lot of fun for all of us. You attended your first Fallfest with church out on the Kerns’ farm and promptly lost your first tennis shoe (returned later fortunately). You ate your first food ever—rice cereal—and immediately caught on to the process of eating, smacking your lips between each tasty bite. The rice cereal compounded the, uh, gastrointestinal issues you had already been prone to with your iron-fortified cereal, so your second food ever was apple/prune juice! Tonight we’ll move on to sweet potatoes—mmm, mmm good. Your first attempts at using a sippy cup happened this month, too. (Until you came along, I had no clue that the introduction of the sippy was even an issue. But apparently it is. So hopefully you’ll get used to it now, making life easier on all of us later!) Just a few weeks ago your first tooth popped out and I think the second one will come along any day now. It’s the first teething experience for all of us and so far, we’re all experiencing some measure of discomfort. You experienced your first Halloween as a honey bee. The weather was warmer than we had anticipated, and your costume was quite toasty, but you bravely put up with the heat to charm the socks off of both sets of grandparents and the neighbors on our block. Finally, you are now seeing the world from an upright position on a regular basis. You can do a brief tripod sit, leaning on your hands for support, and you really like to play in this exer-saucer/play thingy-ma-jig.

If you don’t know this by now, your Dad and I are pretty much smitten by you. Each evening we look at you and say, “Isn’t she the most adorable baby EVER?”

Love,
Mama