Dear Harper — Month Six

Can you believe it? Has it really been half a year already? My little unresponsive lump of grump has turned into a very active and wiggly big baby. I have to admit that the way the time is flying makes me a little sad, and yet, and I can't wait to see what you'll learn to do next. The most significant thing this month is that you are turning six months old in the United States! We got here on June 2, and you are quite the amazing little traveler. You did just fine on that long-ass transatlantic flight, although you were having none of that laying-on-the-floor-in-United's-sorry-excuse-for-a-bassinet business. It's likeness to a duffel bag confused us all. You did give it a go for all of 10 minutes:

After we landed in Chicago, the woman who had been sitting behind us admitted that she was kind of worried about sitting near a baby (and, I'll admit that I was the same way before I gestated one myself for 10 long months), but you had just been so good, gush gush gush. Truth be told, it's always easy to keep you quiet as long as you have a boob in your mouth, so I'm not sure what flying's going to look like when you're not breastfeeding anymore. Most people we flew with said how good you were, which made me wonder if they would think you were bad if you had cried, and how funny it is that people think in such terms, considering that you are, uh, a baby.

You seem like you're on the very verge of crawling, and it really makes you angry that you just can't quite do it. Same with sitting, although the other day, you did manage to sit for about 30 seconds before you did a face plant, which made you scream and cry in a way that I had never heard before. And, of course, it made me cry, too. If we put you on a blanket with toys all around you, you can reach all of them with amazing speed. Your favorite toy at the moment is a red plastic cup and an empty plastic water bottle. This has not stopped your father and me from buying out the baby toy section of Target. We are fools. Shoppin' fools. And Target is crack for the middle class.

So we've been toting you all around the U.S., from the Chicago-O'Hare Airport (very assy) to the Atlantic coast. You've met a slew of my old pals from Kansas, the rest of our family in Florida and even some crazy bitches I met on the Internet. We left you with them in a Baskin Robbins in Port St. Lucie, Florida, for a spell:

Don't worry: There's a Kansas connection here that makes it all OK. Plus, they were pretty rad.

You seem to have made a lot of changes just since we've been here in the States. You're making even more hilarious noises, some of them deafening (and now we know you are saying "mama" and meaning me ... or my boobs, but still!), and you are showing an unmistakeable interest in finally moving on to some solid foods. This is something I've been kind of dreading, since it's a move in a (admittedly very important) direction for you, namely away from mama. At the same time, I can't wait to get your chubby butt back to Germany and finally stick a big piece of steamed broccoli in your hand. We're going to use the baby-led weaning approach with you, which I think will be totally your thing.

But for now, we're breastfeeding across America, where more people probably got a glimpse of my nipples than Janet Jackson's. My specific apologies go out to the cashier at Barnes and Noble, who probably got an eyeful as I was nursing you in the carrier and you decided to look at something shiny just as I was asking about a book on baby-led weaning. Either she was very nonplussed or she just didn't notice. And, Harper, I'll be honest here: I keep expecting people to get all worked up here about breastfeeding in public, but they don't. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with all of these retorts going to waste in my brain. They are so cutting and witty!

Half a year. I still can't believe it.

Love,

Mama

This month's nicknames: Grumpers, Mr. Bear, Ms. Bear (yeah, I hope you don't have gender-identity issues down the road), Baby Bear, Harper Bear, Snackasaurus

This month's song: "Loud as Hope" by Iron and Wine