Dear Lee Lee,

Wow, I have really slacked in the monthly letter department. I hope you won’t hold it against me. You are already 9 months old! Truth is, this was a lot easier to do when I only had one kid and I wrote your sister love letters every month. Having three kids has been an adjustment, but it’s honestly been a fun one. You are nine months old now and you’ve warmed our entire home with your bright smile. Yes, there are a lot of teeth in that smile. Eight actually. I can’t believe it. You don’t bite us too often, but when you do… OUCH!

Roper from Baby Boden

Eight years have gone by since I’ve had a nine month old daughter. So much has changed since then. For one, we get to spend a lot more time together. I get to work from home with you and take you with me when I travel. I love that you and I get to play together every morning, then sometimes you have a special babysitter who comes over to play with you too so I can focus on work for a few hours and not worry about you swallowing something you’re not suppose to.

Yea, you get into everything. You crawl so fast and find every teeny tiny thing that has ever been dropped on the floor. We’ve had to become much more diligent in vacuuming and picking things up. You don’t tend to try to eat large things. Just the small choking hazards. I can’t even tell you how many things I’ve pulled out of your mouth.

You are one determined and busy little baby. I think you will be my first child to walk before their first birthday. At only 9 months old, you’re already walking along the couch and standing from the middle of the floor without pulling up on anything. I bet if I gave you a little help you’d be walking in no time. But I am not ready for that. I am not ready for you to shift from baby to toddler.

So I must confess, you will be 10 months old in a little over a week, but I’m hanging on to every little day. I’m soaking in every bit of you. We all are. You’ve really brought our family together in a way I didn’t know was possible. Your big brother adores you so much. He used to not like babies at all because he didn’t want them touching his things. Ok, well he’s still a little like that with you, but now he will give you one of his toys (the one he doesn’t want to play with) so you can play too. He still doesn’t like when you put them in your mouth though.

When you started crawling he was your biggest cheerleader. Every new little thing you do makes him laugh and scream excitedly for you.

Your sister is a huge help. She carries your around, dances with you, and entertains you when I’m busy. She still loves to dress you up, and match you. I don’t imagine that will be changing any time soon. It’s funny because when she was your age I dressed her up all of the time.

Sometimes you remind me of your big sister when she was your age. Like how you love to be held and carried around. But in other ways you are so different. Like how you LOVE food and getting into things. I have to stop and remind myself how you’re an entirely new person in our family and you come with a whole new set of opinions and personality traits. We can’t wait to see what sort of big ideas you have to share with us. And what kind of person you grow up to be.

I’m so excited to watch you grow. I think now that I’ve been doing this mom thing a while I am going to be a pretty good one to you too. Or at least try to be. I want you to know that even though you have a sister and brother before you, you get to be yourself. I’m sure you’ll look up to them, and I’m sure they’ll look out for you. Where your older sister was our first to love on and break us into the parenting realm, you are growing up in a place surrounded by even more love.

Leo from Adelaide’s Boutique

I tell this to your siblings all the time and I’m going to say it to you too: You can be anything you want to be. Dream big and make it happen. We will help you along the way.

I love you so much baby girl. Thank you for joining our family.

With love,

Mommy

Tags: 9 months old, baby, lee lee, love letter, open letter