Dear Reese,
You are now 7 months old. I can barely believe it. It seems that it was only just last weekend we were digging our way out of a snow drift, and here we are – springtime, warm sunshine, blooming magnolia and cherry trees.
I’m a little behind in writing to you this month, as I’m simultaneously trying to manage my projects, figuring out if I owe estimated taxes or not, and trying to keep up with all your little benchmarks and milestones. Child, I’ve never seen anyone change as much in four short weeks as you have. I sit here in utter amazement sometimes, watching you take in your surroundings and process your environments. It’s like I can literally hear the little neurons in your brain firing off signals, building additional synapses with every new discovery you make.
You have discovered that there is no limit to the number, quantity, and size of foreign objects that you will fit into your mouth. You seem to have a particular taste for paper, especially high-gloss four-color printouts, but usually you’ll attempt to eat anything you can get your hands on — food off of my plate, my cellphone, your shirt. The only two objects that are near impossible to get you to put in your mouth appear to be green beans and peas.
It’s really cool, actually, to watch you figure out how to pick something up. Even something as small as a sweet potato puff or even a Cheerio — I’ve watched the progression from clumsy, blind grabbing has quickly evolved into a much finer, deliberate, and careful orchestration of your fingers and hands. Plus, the zwieback toasts… oh, you so do look very much like a little chipmunk nibbling, both hands grasping your crunchy treat.
Just now I wrote an email to your father about you. Yes, you. You, my little thieving monkey, were watching me eat a delicious, crunchy carrot for a snack this afternoon. Oh, how your eyes did watch my every nibble, each lip-smacking crunch of crispy, sweet, inappropriate-for-your-age carrot. The way you oh-so-intently watched my nibbles should have been a warning to me about what would happened next.
YOU. SNATCHED. MY. CARROT.
You leaned over, hand outstretched, and nabbed the carrot right out of my mouth and placed it directly into your slobberbox.
You couldn’t have looked more pleased with yourself as you did then, grinning around that large, orange, half-eaten prize. With a deft swipe of my index finger I freed the potential choking hazard from your maw, the whole time wiping the laughter tears from my eyes. I suppose that it would be irresponsible of me to not impart this first life lesson of manners: Always ask first before stealing food from the mouth of another.
The Rolling Over: you’re just not quite there yet. I’ve watched you squirm and kick and come THISCLOSE to rolling over onto your tummy. I’ve even put you on your tummy and you roll up on your side, but then you get frustrated and scream, and then flop back over on your face. Dear Little One: we have much to learn about patience, because if you get angry about the injustice of Tummy Time, just wait until you have to decipher the Internal Revenue Service tax code the night before estimated payments on self employment taxes are due.
The Sleeping: I think my personal favorite development this past month has to be your sleeping pattern. I used to think that “sleeping through the night” meant that you would sleep five or six hours in a row. No, that’s for babies, for 4 month olds. Now you sleep more like ten or twelve hours without complaint, from 7 pm to 7 am. That’s not to say that you don’t wake up, I know you do because I can hear you playing in your crib around 3:30 or 4 in the morning — but you don’t cry, you seem to be perfectly content wriggling around and talking to your blue stuffed monkey. Eventually you settle down and I don’t hear from you again until the glorious morning when I wake up. Reese, I only dreamed that I would see eight hours of sleep again, and here you give that precious gift to me.
The Splashing: You love your bathtime. At first, in the early months, you didn’t much care for anything related to the bath. Now you love it. You love being naked. You love your bath toys. And lately you have discovered that you love to sit up in the tub and SPLASH.
The Babbly/Screechy/Shouty Muscle Development: Your verbal skills are much improving. I just love that quiet and sweet baby babble of “ah-bah, bah bah bah ah-bah”, it’s so cute that it seriously makes me want to reproduce (but then I remember about the blissful eight hours of sleep I am getting now, and I reconsider). When you are worked up, you flap your arms wildly, look up at me from where you are sitting and you screech. Screeching and grinning and flapping. You have also “discovered your shouty muscles”, as Ken would put it. I’m hoping your discovery of the shouty muscles does not last, but I fear this phase probably lasts well into your teenage years.
I think you might have suddenly developed a sense of humor. Of course, your sense of humor isn’t quite refined enough to enjoy, say, a good fart joke. But you seem to find your daddy HILARIOUS when he fakes sneezes. The fake sneeze! Sneeze is the new fart, I guess. Anyway, you think it so funny to hear the comedic “ahhhh Ahhhh AHHHHHHHHCHOOOOOOO” that you burst out into convulsive giggles, your whole body laughing. You killed yourself laughing at your father’s fake sneezes, seriously. This fascination with fake sneezes is getting a little out of hand because now, when you sneeze FOR REAL, you burst out laughing. My little goofball.
My Little Sweet Sugar, my PunkinButtercup. What a month you’ve had. I love our afternoons together — going for walks in the park, running errands around town, or even just napping together for an hour to two. I can’t wait to see what you do next. Perhaps rolling over? Beginning to crawl? How about doing my estimated taxes worksheets?
Love,
Momma