Seven Months.

June-June is seven months now. Part of me wants to deny it and just hope it's not passing by that quickly, but that's not how it works.....so I'm trying to just eat her up and enjoy her with thankfulness. Having her has filled me with praise this year in a unique way.
She's eating like a hoss, though still pretty tiny (weighing in at 12 lbs 13 oz.).
She eagerly laughs at the smallest entertainment.
She's starting to sleep completely through the night.
She grew her first two teeth just this week, and then, last night, while Dave was upstairs with the others ......
She sat up all on her own. She drank a bottle & cuddled & talked to me & then...sat up.
I *may* have even gotten a little teary.

In the midst of teething & kid battles & cooking & messes & laundry, etc., etc., etc.....it was a quiet-miracle-kind-of-moment just watching this little new person grow and change. And out of nowhere....awe and gratitude fill your soul.

"Are there physical places that simply must be seen before I stop breathing within time, before I inhale eternity? Why? To say that I've been arrested by wonder?
... These very real lungs will breathe in more than 11,000 liters of air today, and tonight over our farm will rise the Great Hexagon of the blazing winter stars....and I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed. The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two-stacked crystals the same; the trees in the wood draw in collective green breath to the still of January hibernation, and God in the world will birth ice from His womb, frost of heaven...and number again the strands on my head.
Isn't it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice?"

-Ann Voskamp