Today Penny is nine months old.

Today, she has been outside my body for as long as she was inside it.

A year and a half ago, she didn't exist at all. And then a few days later, she did, and she was just a cluster of cells too small to see with the naked eye.

But already, that cluster of cells knew that she was a she, and that she would have blonde hair and blue eyes and look startlingly similar to her father, and that she would have a sunny disposition and a hundred other things that we're still waiting to learn.

Wow.

This morning, as we sat on the bed and waited for Matt to finish brushing his teeth, Penny put down her toy and looked up at me and smiled, and reached up to hug me, and I thought, Nine months ago, I would never have even been able to imagine how perfect a hug could be.

Happy Nine Months, Penelope Anne.

Which is not to say that everything is perfectly rosy all the time. Getting Penny to sleep at night is beginning to be something of a chore.

Last night, she fell asleep at 7:45 and I put her to bed. She woke up crying just a little after 8. Matt got her calmed down, but she refused to go back to bed, so he brought her downstairs to sit on my lap.

She fought sleep tooth and nail, and finally dropped off again a little after 9.

(It would have been a little before nine, but at 8:57 a telemarketer called. Matt not only bit the guy's head off, but he chewed it up, swallowed it, and then shat it back down the stump of his still-bleeding neck. It was quite impressive.)

So we put her back to bed and then went to bed ourselves.

We talked about starting this weekend to try to teach her how to go to bed by herself - putting her down when she's tired but not actually asleep, and just enduring her fussing. It's something we probably should have started months ago.

She woke up again around 10:15.

Well, actually, she didn't. It sounded like she had woken up, but when I went in to try to soothe her back to sleep, I discovered that she was whimpering in her sleep. Not quite whimpering, even. It was as if she was dreaming she was crying, so every breath she drew had that sad, hitching sound to it.

I couldn't soothe it out of her. I picked her up. She stayed asleep, but continued to cry-hitch-breathe. I began to panic that she was having trouble breathing normally. I tried to consider more realistic alternatives, and decided to check her diaper.

She woke up a little on the changing table, calmed down, and dozed off again. With relief, I finished changing her and got her back in the sleeper. Maybe she's just sick of sleeping in the carseat, I thought. I took the carseat out of the crib.

The instant I laid her down, though, she woke up, and her face scrunched up, and she started crying.

I picked her up again and tried to soothe her. She was having none of it. She cried louder.

Matt got up and went to make a bottle. Penny cried louder still.

By the time Matt came back with the bottle, she was shrieking louder than I'd ever heard before, jumping up and down on my lap as if she was trying desperately to get my attention. MOM! SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE!

I was beginning to envision a mid-night visit to the emergency room for some horrible pain, but the instant Matt arrived with the bottle, she grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth and started sucking like she hadn't eaten for days. She slorked down the whole thing in about half the time it usually takes her.

Once she'd determined that she'd sucked up the last drops, she released the bottle, and went limp in my arms. She stirred as I put her back in the carseat, but didn't waken. And she slept soundly until just a little before six this morning.

It was only about three hours since her last bottle, and only about four hours since she'd finished a pretty sizeable dinner. I have trouble believing she was really that hungry.

I think we just had Baby's First Tantrum.

--Liz