Seven months

This week, Judah is 7 months old. Has another month passed already?

It’s possible it just seems like the past month passed quickly, because we’ve been having so much fun. Ever since Judah started crawling, he’s become so incredibly interested in the world around him. It finally feels like everything isn’t just happening to him. He’s experiencing it. I hope this is only the beginning of a lifelong love for learning. There’s so much that I can’t wait to show him.

At some point in the past month, Judah became too restless to spend our days at home. He was fussy and antsy, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what his problem was. I couldn’t keep him entertained, and I spent a couple days pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I realized – he was bored. Duh. I didn’t think we’d reach this point at just six months, but I guess that shows how much I knew about babies. It seems he was just tired of looking at me, tired of looking at our house. He wanted a change of scene. To be honest, I felt the same way. Hoping to meet friends for both of us, we started filling up our social calendar with playdates at the library and other places around town.

Judah loves it. The first time he set eyes on another baby, his face lit up as if to say, I’m not the only one. He is endlessly entertained just by watching other babies play and laugh and move. On the days when we get out of the house to a playgroup, he behaves and sleeps so much better. I honestly feel a little silly that it took me so long to realize that’s what he needed.

We’re both much happier now.

His physical development continues to amaze me. He mastered the army crawl at 5 and a half months, and he can now move quickly enough that I spend a good amount of my day chasing him. He’s starting to get the hang of cross crawling, and I even catch him sliding his foot underneath him and putting the slightest bit of weight on it like he’s trying to figure out how to stand. I hope we’ve got a bit of time still, but he’s hit every other physical milestone shockingly early, so I hold my breath every time puts that foot on the ground.

We’re starting to wonder if he might already be a lefty. He seems to favor his left hand, and he reaches with it first in most cases. Tony is ambidextrous, but only because his dad encouraged him to use his right hand even though he favored his left as a baby. As a result, he writes with his right hand, but he uses his left hand for unconscious tasks like counting money and dealing cards. We’re waiting to see if Judah continues to favor his left hand, and I have a feeling he will.

He’s finally developing a sense of humor, and he laughs at the strangest things. Tony still gets the best laughs from him, and it usually involves silly dancing and sound effects from his toys. He’s finally responding to peek-a-boo, which I find endlessly entertaining.

Sometimes he seems to laugh at nothing at all. He’ll be nursing or sitting in my lap, and out of nowhere, he’ll start to chuckle. I would love to know what he’s thinking.

The funniest thing in the world, though, is when Mama is stressed. I have a tendency to storm around dramatically throwing my hands around and talking animatedly. Judah finds this hilarious. There’s nothing quite like the moment when you’re frustrated or stressed and you realize your baby is laughing at you. I suppose I should get used to it now.

He gets more expressive every day. Sometimes on the weekends, Tony wakes up with him and lets me get an extra hour of sleep. On those mornings, when I finally get up and come into the living room, Judah lets out an excited shriek as if to say, “There you are, Mama!”

Now that he sleeps in his room at night, his face lights up when I come into his room to get him in the morning, and it melts my heart. I guess I never noticed if he missed me for the first few months of his life, because we were so rarely separated.

When Tony comes home from work, he greets him with a huge grin. I may hold his favor now, but it’s only because I feed him. I can see the two of them uniting against me in the near future.

He seems to have traded cuddles for crawling, and I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared for him to outgrow cuddling so early. The only time he’ll hold still enough to let me hold him is when he’s reached a certain level of exhaustion. The rest of the time he’s bopping around, smacking me in the face, scratching me, pulling my hair. I think I could deal with his refusal to cuddle with me if he wasn’t so violent about it. I never knew that a 7-month-old could be so rough.

Being a stay-at-home mom in a new city isn’t always easy. It can be isolating. I spend so much of my day caring for someone who lacks the communication skills necessary to say, “Hey, Mom. Thanks. I know how hard you work to keep me fed and dry and entertained. I know it can’t be easy to spend your time worrying about someone else’s sleep schedule and bowel movements, and I want you know, I really appreciate what you do for me.” It’ll probably be decades before I get a clear-cut thank you from this kid, and even then, it probably won’t be until I’m on my deathbed (when I’m 104 years old).

But I’m okay with it. I get to hear him giggle when I wash his neck at bath time. I get to see that huge grin when I come into his room first thing in the morning. I get to feel him relax and drift contentedly to sleep in my arms every night. I get to marvel as I watch him grow. He makes me proud every day, and he reminds me why people take on the seemingly impossible challenge of parenthood.

Nobody will tell you that it’s easy. But it’s worth every scratch, every sleepless night, and every challenging minute.