Sometimes I feel like a parent from the old country, making a match for my daughter for her future. In this case, though, it’s not her husband I’m matching; it’s her best friend.

It only seems natural that best friends should be generational, and it’s so special that my best friend, Stefanie, and I have baby girls 5 months apart. BBFF — Baby Best Friends Forever — should be easy for the two munchkins since they both have the same hobbies (putting things in their mouth), tastes in food (Earth’s Best food and Mum Mums), cry schedule (no naps means cranky attitude), fashion style (Baby Gap for the win!), sense of humor (their mamas talk to them in crazy voices and they think it’s hilarious), and — most importantly — types of parents (Stef and I have been friends since 5th grade and we are way too much alike). So, there it is, written in stone — or computer monitor — Brielle + Madelyn = BBFF.

Stefanie and I go way, way, way back to the summers of Camp Alonim where we bonded over hairy kosher chicken, cute (?) pubescent Jewish boys, and complaints about sweat and the nature. We went our separate ways to college and lost touch because it was a [gasp!] Facebook-less era.

But then, only last spring, Stefanie saw a post (because we are now very much in a Facebook-full era) about my pregnancy and reached out to say congrats and that she has a newborn herself. Well, there’s nothing like a mama and a mama-to-be that unites women in mysterious ways. We reconnected and it was just like old times. We missed out on some pretty exciting life events like college graduations, engagements and weddings, and, most importantly, the birth of Brielle, but we are so happy to be in each other’s lives, and, best of all, making new memories with our babies.

During my pregnancy, I learned a lot from Stefanie and Brielle as I watched them team up as the cutest mother-daughter duo I know. A lot of my equipment and tricks of the trade are ideas from Stefanie because she really is a mama who knows best. And Stef was there for me, too. She came to the hospital after Madelyn came into the world and she saw me at my worst during my horrible recovery. She made me feel better about what I was going through, assured me I wasn’t crazy, and supported me through irrational talk and radical feelings. A lot of people in my life did, too, but, until Stefanie, I never really had a girlfriend so present and nearby who was also my rock.

Now that Madelyn is older, she and Brielle interact and it’s pretty much the most adorable thing in the world. They stare at each other and Brielle waves (Madelyn is still working on that trick) and we mamas exchange babies to try to make them laugh. We always succeed. We have fun with our Mommy & Me group and like to go out on great adventures to the mall or lunches with the husbands, too. I know it’s just the start of many years of friendship as families and it’s special that even our parents — the grandparents — are friends. Lunch dates with Mimi and Grammy included are always filled with lots of laughs, and it’s nice to see that Madelyn and Brielle come from a great line of funny women. Stef and I fully believe that laughter is what keeps us going. Cracking up til your stomach hurts — that’s what motherhood is about.

And today is even more special! It’s Brielle’s birthday!! It blows my mind that Stefanie has a one-year-old. That means that Madelyn’s not far from that big birthday, herself! Each time I see Brielle, she has a new skill, facial expression, and sound. She’s been so fun to watch throughout this year and I’m so glad that she’s Madelyn’s BBFF. Happy birthday, Brielle!!

Between a drought of creativity and a robot who hacked the back end of this here bloggy-blog, it’s been a quiet few weeks here on BornFriedman. Oops. Madelyn has been keeping us busy and active parents as she seemingly grows eons every day.

On March 9th, she turned 7 months old! Seven months is more than halfway to twelve months, twelve months is a year, a year is basically a toddler, and toddlers quickly turn into kindergartners who go on to college thirteen years later, so yeah, Madelyn is basically a sorority girl already. Sigh. I can’t even handle how fast the time flies. I sound like that old lady in Macy’s who looks into the stroller, sees a baby, makes the tsk-tsk sound of nostalgia as she nods her head and then says to me as if she’s my therapist,”It all just goes so fast.” Yes. It does. Lady is right. There I said it. Now stop telling me, ladies!! Salt. Wound. And all that.

As quickly as it all goes, each stage is my favorite. Just when I think the previous month was as good as it gets, the next months has me all warm and fuzzy, full of beaming love for my kid. I can’t help it. She is pretty awesome.

This month, Madelyn…

• Discovered her voice. Watch out, Christine. The Phantom of the Opera found a new Angel of Music. Madelyn is making all kinds of sounds, mostly high pitched, some of them … um, irritating. But some are just so funny! She does this thing where she kind of gargles like she’s a chassidic Jewish man with a bottle of Scope in her throat. That’s it. We are changing her name to Tevye. Add the gutteral sounds to a squeal and we’ve got ourselves a hysterical one-man (baby?) band. She cracks herself up over it, too, which, ya know, is icing on the kosher cake.
• Is chowing down on baby food! She started on cereal in the past month, but now she’s eating legit veggies and fruits made by Earth’s Best. I considered making her own food. But since I can barely get meals on the table for the adults in the house, I decided to go with the organic jars. I say “organic” so that I’m not judged as harshly. But anyway, Madelyn is legit eating. It’s pretty cool. She started with peas. Wasn’t such a fun. But then she tore up the carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. Then we reintroduced the peas and she’s on board. Fruits are a big hit as she’s scarfing down apples, pears, apricots. She’s just about ready to move on to the more complicated mixtures like corn and brown rice or cranberry and pumpkin. Quite a smorgasbord, that baby food.
• ALMOST began crawling. Ohmygosh you guys, she is SO CLOSE. She gets up on all fours, rocks back and forth a bit, and then goes all 80s on us and does The Worm. She’s so hardcore. She hasn’t quite figured out that she needs to move forward to go anywhere, but she manages to get to where she wants to go by rolling. “Squirmy” might be an adjective that comes to mind when thinking about Madelyn’s physicality. “Exhausted” is an adjective that comes to mind when I think about my feelings when thinking about Madelyn’s physicality. I predict by the Eight Month! blog post she will be crawling.
• Responds to people! When seeing some of her favorite peeps, Madelyn lets out a coo and smiles so big, her cheeks fall off her face. Her eyes light up and then she kicks and flaps her arms out of pure joy (see above: “Squirmy.”). It is especially cute when we pick her up out of her crib in the mornings or when she sees her Daddy upon his arrival home from work. And our egos are totally swelling, so really, it’s a win-win.

Month 7 has a lot of fabulous events to look forward to and it’s going to be so fun living them with her!