Where did the time go?

People told me this would happen. I would blink and my daughter would be 6-months old.

Well, the big 6-month mark is only a few days away and I don't know why it's surprising me that it's right around the corner, but it is. I was just upstairs nursing her and I had two pacifiers in my hand. One was the infant one and the other was the one for 6-months and older. The 6-month one looked gigantic to me. I kept trying to picture my nieces and nephews with the lager pacifiers because they all used them quite often. I kept trying to say to myself, "No, this is normal, they all use this size. It's big, because they're big kids...and you know, they don't use 'infant' things anymore." Oh Lord.

My little girl is moving up to the big girl pacifier already. And I know what's next. Soon she'll be stealing my pizza crust or my husband's soft pretzels and we'll be fine with her sucking on them because she'll have teeth and this is all normal for her to do.

My little one is growing up, becoming independent in her own 6-month way, and showing her personality more and more each day. She's playing peek-a-boo with us hiding herself under her burp cloth and pulling it down only after I say, "Where is Ella?" How the heck she knows to wait for her "Where is Ella?" cue is beyond me. Did she really pick it up that quickly? Genius I swear. She plays with her dog Kali, hits her belly when she's hungry, and is starting to dive on her belly to crawl.

I can't fathom her turning 1 in 6 more months from now. Sometimes I look at her and say, "you're really my daughter...you're the one I always wondered about my whole life," so it's baffling to me to even think that, yes, "she's my daughter...my 6-month old daughter." But, she is. Babies do this. They grow older. But it's still amazes me how quickly the time passes. I'll be asking, "where did the time go?" forever and ever.