Miss Amelie,
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| You have almost outgrown your side-car! |
You're sleeping, and you have been for long enough that I've microwaved up lunch, poured myself a soda, and consumed most of it while reading Facebook -- so I am likely to hear your cry of awakening any second. This is The Moment I had never experienced before your birth, never conceived of -- but every parent must know it well. This is The Moment in which I get to choose what to do -- dishes? thank-you cards? clean up the overwhelming clutter of our home? exercise? laundry? Blog entry wins, because it hasn't in so long, and your precious infancy is beginning to pass very quickly.
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| You started laughing, rarely, at 4 months |
Outside our little house the sun is sparkling on diamond-studded snow. Just now while I nursed you to sleep the golden filament of your magic hair whisped about on the flannel receiving blanket with which we protect the sheets from your continuous spitting up and drooling. You have one single magic hair an easy 3 inches long, because for some reason that one individual hair got a jump on all the others and was an inch or two long at your birth. Every time I check for it I am worried this will be the time it has fallen out, but so far it is holding strong, and plucking it out to put it in your baby book just seems like an evil idea. Your head smells warm and sweet to me; your little hands are so pudgy that they dimple inwards at the knuckles and you have a permanent rubber-band-like crease at your wrist.
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| God-Daddy Geoffey sponsors your anti-pink wardrobe |
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You seem to have firsts at every turn. Today you went to your first movie in a theater -- the new Muppet Movie -- and amazingly for your age, you were quiet the whole time, even grinning at the giant screen during the dance numbers. You play with sounds and facial expressions like fascinating toys, and every three or four days you come up with a new sound. Most recent (and one of my favorites) is the near-silent "bop" noise of opening your mouth without saying anything, like a fish blowing bubbles. Last week you started actually blowing bubbles, spit bubbles, which I still strongly prefer to your new sound the week before -- you started experimenting to see how mind-numbingly high-pitched you could shriek. I was very relieved that you didn't decide to do that in the dark warmth of the movie theater today. Every night we read a book in Spanish; sometimes I remember to sign "nurse" before you eat but usually I forget. Our plan (my plan, but Daddy humors me) is to teach you some really basic words in Arapaho. Probably I'll forget that too.
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| You have reserves about THIS game, but the Wii is usually fun |
You've only this last week begun to cry in a way that I am choosing on occasion not to indulge. One of the books I trust most (
The Science of Parenting by -- oh, there you are now, waking up... if I can get to you fast enough you might sleep for a long time! So either that or this post ends in parentheses :)
**Two hours later
Just woke up myself, to the dogs' hungry growling, at which you awoke beside me. I had fallen asleep as you nursed, cuddled in bed, and I guess I needed it -- last night we tried "really" co-sleeping and I didn't get unconscious much. So many days pass this way, with sweet unintended time like that -- Moments come and gone under the sleepily falling snow...
