Dear Baby Ike,
I hardly know where to start this month. You turned seven months old this past Friday, and while I know this letter won’t capture anywhere near all of the amazement I have in your development in the last month, I need to get it posted now or before I can blink you will be eight months already! You are doing so many new things and there aren’t enough hours in the days for me to properly sop up all your deliciousness and also function as an adult human. I gladly sacrifice the functioning part, frankly. A lot of the time I know I am leaving a lot of quasi-important, household-y things completely undone, but for the most part I don’t care at all. It’s quite difficult to convince myself that I should do anything at all instead of hanging out with you, feeding you, playing with you, or snuggling you. This often means that I also neglect to do things like cut your fingernails and toenails, because I have such a hard time forcing myself to do something that I know will frustrate you and make you upset (and yet I’m also loathe to try doing it while you’re alseep, because I know you need that sleep and I don’t want to wake you up accidentally!) Good thing Grandma is happy to help out on that task as well. Otherwise you’d have talons probably literally inches long sometimes!
Going to work five days a week makes me feel like I am missing SO MUCH of your cuteness, which is getting dangerously cuter by the day. Grandma got some awesome pictures of you in the bathtub at her house the other day, and I can’t wait until she sends them to me. I love it when she gets her camera out so I can feel like I get to catch up on at least a sliver of the fun you have with her all week. You really do keep her on her toes, and you’re not even actually mobile yet. I know she loves being with you so often (but she could probably stand it if you gave her a break with a real nap now and then).
Speaking of sleep, we have been mostly cosleeping for a while now (three months? I don’t even know anymore), as it seems most logical that neither of us has to really get up out of bed to have your dream feeds. I know I should probably be working harder to get you used to sleeping in your crib, but again, it’s very hard to care right now. It seems silly to put effort into putting you down for the night farther away from me than you need to be. You will only be small for a short time, and this time of being a baby is getting shorter all the time, so I don’t think I will look back and regret being able to cuddle you close after you drift off to sleep. Waking in the night with you can be exhausting, but I treasure it at the same time. A couple of times now you have woken up in the morning and fussed for a bit without actually opening your eyes first, and then you eventually open them, continuing to fuss a little, not realizing that I am right there in the bed next to you. When you do notice that I’m there, your face breaks into the biggest, most joyful smile I have ever seen, and my heart bursts into a million pieces right there on the spot. It makes me long for the technology of a camera implanted right in my brain so I could simply blink and try to capture that feeling and never ever let it go. I suppose I might get the same kind of smiles coming in to pick you up out of the crib in the mornings, but it’s so nice to be able to lay my face down right next to yours and just drink in the sweetness that is you. I have never in my life been this close to being a morning person, but you really do give me endless things to look forward to, day after day.
You’ve now tasted several different solid foods: avocado, sweet potato, green peas, and bananas (I feel like I may be forgetting one right now). At first you didn’t seem to really be liking the tastes of these things, if the hilarious faces you make are any indication, but you do like the act of eating, grabbing the spoon and putting it in your own mouth. I think you’re slowly starting to actually like the food itself, at least sometimes. Next on the list to try are pears and apples, and who knows what else. There are still many, many tastes that will be brand new to you; it is so exciting to me to think about seeing your face and reaction to new foods. I am also relieved that you’re still nursing. Now that you’re not exclusively breastfed, I will admit to living in a little fear of the day that you decide to wean. As thrilling as it is to watch you grow and develop, I am nowhere near ready to be done with your babyhood. Thankfully we still have a little ways to go!
You continue to add different sounds to your repertoire of baby babble. Lately I hear a lot of “buh-wuh” and “bwuh” though I don’t think it means anything in particular yet. Still lots of MEH and MUH, sometimes repeated so it gets awfully close to ‘Mama,’ which I of course love to hear. The more I hear you making recognizable sounds, the easier it becomes to picture you actually talking, though that is still a ways off yet. I can imagine your little voice singing songs and telling jokes and asking for things that you want and telling me what you think about all kinds of things, and I just can’t believe how lucky we are that we get to have you in our lives, doing all these normal things that to us will be clear strokes of genius, every time.
You’re not crawling yet, and I haven’t seen you roll from back to belly yet either, but in addition to rolling from tummy to back you now also scootch in circles when we put you down on your belly, so you’re definitely working hard on the pre-crawling skills. It’s starting to become more concretely imaginable that we’ll be chasing you all over the house soon – we have a lot (read: ALL) of babyproofing yet to do!
I love you so much, my little Sugar Butt. I never thought I would be the kind of mother to make up ridiculously obnoxious nicknames for her kid like that, but you have really turned me into a different person, and I absolutely love being that goofy, baby-obsessed mother that I never thought I’d have a chance to be. I’m definitely a great big silly fool for you, Isaac.
Love always,
Mama
Not Undecided 