Here, There, and Everywhere. Babyproofing has Begun.

Ella is on the go. Rolling around, scooting about, pulling up, and touching everything. And yes, she started to open cabinet doors. Gone are the days of stillness -- she is a little lady on a misson. Touch this, move that, grab here, travel to there. Whether by roll or by Army crawl (yes, a capital A because her Uncle is a Major), Ella is a new baby.

We ordered over $100 worth of baby proofing supplies and I'm sure we're going to have to spend $100 more before we're completely done. Thank you, Amazon.com for having Amazon.com/mom because it is priceless. The amount of money I've saved on shipping is enormous. Even more enormous is the amount of money I'd spent on Amazon.

But, there are some things that Amazon cannot help with. What do I do with my dog's food? It's going to be in her little hands soon. One friend came to visit and her one-year old already ate some so I'm sure Ella is going to as well. What about the stools and bar-height chairs I have? Are they going to come crashing down on her? Is there anything I can do about it? She'll get bumps and bruises and eh, it happens, but I'm looking around my house and realizing there's a lot to do and very little time to get it done. I better get cracking.

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.