4 months
Well my boy, your 4-month, that is 1/3 of a year, birthday was also the winter solstice.
And you slept a whopping 8 hours. Your mum, however, woke up about 8 times to make sure your heart was all right, after dreams about your sister. You breathe so calmly and shallowly when you’re deep asleep. And then there are the times you moan and grunt and snore. Who knew that baby sleep was so… noisy? But I’m used to it now. Before you arrived I was sure that at 6 months we would move you into your own room and be glad for it. Now I’m wondering how to make that transition ever, because having you right there is just the best. Another point for attachment parenting.
Your skills have grown by leaps and bounds this month. You’re getting really good with your hands and pressing things up to your mouth. You can roll over, although after practicing for much of a day you seem to have decided it’s not really for you yet. You hold your head up well and you ’stand’ when someone supports your torso. But what you are most working on is your voice - shrieks, shouts, and giggles. I would swear that you sing, especially to the Hallelujah chorus, which you love even more than Day-O.
You’ve started looking frowsy at the Underworld soundtrack. I personally congratulate you on your early rejection of goth music, but I don’t think everyone is read to give up yet.
You have a quirky sense of humour and laugh at crumpled paper, ripping paper, your new rattle, the piece of your swing that moves, and whistling. You also love to have things fly at your face and then stop before they hit. I don’t know what this means for sports involving balls, but if I had to hazard a guess I think soccer might be your game. Of course that would make me a soccer mum.
Your personality is amazing. You’re at that bubbly Gerber baby age and you seem to spend most of your waking hours smiling, although some of that impression is my bias. When you start to get tired or fussy you make a very gradual transition and give lots of time for me to intervene. You are an extremely happy, easy going baby, and it makes me feel like a dolt when it’s hard anyway, but mostly grateful. There is so much opportunity for joy each day with you. I’m leery of the narcissistic potential of the way you light up whenever I appear, but you know - I light up when you appear, so I think we have a reciprocal thing going here. It’s very much about us still, these long days where we are each other’s world. Oh your dad’s a huge part too, and after that your grandparents and chosen family. You are loved by many and you smile and wriggle back. But for the every day bits, it’s you and me, bud.
I took you to see Santa yesterday. I was going to forgo the Santa’s knee shot: it has so many bad connotations for me. But then a stack of Christmas cards arrived for us in the mail and I started to think about you looking back in albums and wondering about your first Christmas and I thought we ought to at least have one Christmas-looking picture. And then, serendipitously, I heard from JF about a Santa who has a loveseat because he doesn’t believe in kids having to sit on his knee and so I took you out to that particular Santa and he was in fact just that lovely and thoughtful, along with his elves: he must be a very close cousin to the actual Santa.
It made me sad though: he was at the mall where your dad and I posted some mail in December of 2003 when I was carrying your sister and we had stood right at that Santa village and planned out bringing your sister the next year. I’d forgotten that until we got there. And you see, that never happened. I would have cried, but you were there filling my arms and that helped enough to get through it. But now I’m crying thinking about it.
In your typical fashion you smiled all the way there and back but on Santa’s knee you looked rather stunned, because you could not figure out what all the big nutcracker-like decorations were. I think that picture is even better because you know, it is crazy, what we get you kids to do for fear of empty spaces in albums.
It’s a good, cozy world we have going. Most days. Then we have the odd day where we don’t find the rhythm and then it’s choppy and odd; you nurse, you don’t nurse, you fuss but I never find the exact right thing. But even that is becoming familiar.
Although we do need to talk about naps: you seem to have decided you don’t need them, or at least only cat naps, and this means that starting from about noon onwards you get progressively crankier. But right now you’re on minute 12 of a nap and I have hopes you might make it past minute 20 this time.
You definitely are developing tastes in your own way. You don’t like to lie back in people’s arms: it’s sit up, or else be over the shoulder. And facing out where possible please. You like to walk around new places in someone’s arms. You like your car seat if you’re not strapped in. You like to be in your bouncy chair and on the floor and in the playpen and in the crib, and held in between. If you’re held too long though you’ll actually reach down at the bouncy chair and fuss for it.
And you get bored pretty quick these days. I am learning about objects all over again: last week you and Lyria discovered her blue silk scarf is an amazing thing that shimmers and falls softly over your face and feels smooth and nice. This morning your lion rattle danced the Sugarplum fairy dance to the music on the radio.
Everything in the house seems new like that: the rim of a plate, the handle of a spoon, the brightness of a red Christmas card envelope. This new playfulness is another gift from you to us, and in return we have found ways to keep your day full of new shiny smooth hard soft bright dark big small objects. Childproofing is on the horizon, but right now it’s all about bringing things to you to sample.
You also have started to like books. To chew on at least, but you will sit through a short board book and looks solemnly at something - sometimes my finger, sometimes the colours. You love the Boyntons most so far, but this may be because I like them most too. You also like pictures of people’s faces. I tried showing you a picture of a gorilla face though and you didn’t smile at it. So I guess you know your species. I was tempted to see where a picture of Paul Martin, the person who wants to be re-elected Prime Minister but is screwing up and will probably deliver our country to the Conservatives, would fit into the spectrum, but I didn’t have one handy. (Oops, the politics snuck into your letter!)
You hate baths and so far we have not found a way to change that: the room’s warm and cosy, your bath has a nice soft towel in it, the water’s a good temperature - and you hate it all. I took them over from your dad so his one half hour with you (lately that’s a good day, but it will change soon) won’t be all unhappy. So now we have them in the later morning, and their removal from the bedtime routine doesn’t seem to bother you one bit.
After only a third of a year I cannot imagine life without you even for a day. Leaving you for even an hour seems the hardest thing. This amazes me sometimes and horrifies me at others but deep down I think it is just the way things are right now. I am so glad for you. Happy 4th month my Noah-Birdy-Bee-Benjamin.
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This is a wonderful entry, I won’t go into rhapsodies over how sweet, how true, etc. it is, but only because I’m pretty sure you already KNOW how real and truthful it is.
Besides that, and the generic ‘Happy ChristmaHanuKwanzaakah’ post I wanted to add, I’ll just note that Molly hates the bath too, so I take her into the shower with me. It sounds way scarier than it is, I promise. I get in, wash my hair, and have J hand her to me and then soap her up and rinse her off while holding her. Having that skin-to-skin contact seems to reassure her and keep her from getting anxious and angry like she does in the bath. Once she’s clean I hand her back to J who’s waiting with a towel, finish my shower, and we’re good.
Yes, it is kinda nerve-racking when she’s all slippery and squirmy in my arms, but generally I’d rather have trauma for me than her, and baths really do make her miserable. So since I figure that though I might find it rather charming when she gets to smelling like a ripe Camembert other people probably won’t, showers it is for us.
Oh yeah, and I forgot to add: Molly’s got a heart murmur as well, we went in earlier this month to get her echocardiogram done (all fine and innocent, thank the thousand little gods, and likely to disappear before she’s three), and so though I can’t wholly enter into your fears about it (there is no equivalent to Emily in my life, and I’m not quite arrogant enough to think that I can imagine what effect she has on you, Carl, and Noah), I can at the very least say that:
A) As you already know, statistically it’s almost certainly no big deal,
B) People telling you that probably makes you want to smack them,
C) You’re allowed to wig out about it a bit if you need to.
D) The hardest part of the exam itself for us was getting Molly to lie still for the readings, and what worked best was holding her down gently and stroking her forehead in the ‘close your eyes’ way that we do when giving her the last feeding before bedtime.
This was a fabulous entry.