Dear Reese,
Are you sure your eyes didn’t double in size since last month? Because I’m pretty sure they weren’t that big before.
Today you turn four months old, and what better way to celebrate than to stay at home and watch NFL Divisional Round football games with your daddy! Your father is thrilled that you seem to enjoy watching football, even if you don’t have any idea of what is going on right now. It’s just his luck he married a woman who just doesn’t much care about football, so you can understand the joy he has in knowing he can groom you to be his NFL-loving sidekick.
I hope, for your sake, you like the Vikings. At the very least, don’t be a Packers fan — your father will accuse me of turning you against him.
So let’s talk about all the new things you’ve been doing this month.
Let’s start with your hands. You have discovered you have two of them, and you have been learning to manipulate them once you stopped involuntarily punching yourself in the face. You’ve been learning how delicious they can be when both fists are stuffed into your mouth…because, of course, one hand just isn’t enough. You’ve also started to grab and grip things, be it holding onto your many, many age-appropriate toys or simply stroking and pinching my arm as I change your diaper on the Magical Changing Pad of Bliss.
Naturally, all this grabbing of stuff around you means only one thing: Everything you snatch you try to put into your eager, drooly maw. Now I realize that the next several months (years?) I’ll be occupied with watching out for all the poisonous or sharp items that you inevitably will want to try to taste. Oh, goodbye life of simplicity and ease!
Your mouth has been an important part in learning about the world around you, even though I know you aren’t yet fully aware of your tongue just yet. You have started to drool a little more than last month, with which you use to blow a lot of slobber bubbles that dribble down your chin. You make these exaggerated lip-smacking noises when you are get hungry, much more intense than you have done before. Much to our delight you still give us the “eager face” just before I nurse you, of which I will never tire.
Remember last month when I wrote “you are so hesitant and cautious to make a sound”? You are no longer shy, hesitant, OR cautious about your sound-making ability. You are now quite the chatterbox, and I just love talking back to you. You talk to your toys, you talk to us, you talk to no one in particular at 4:00 in the morning when you wake up. Just these long phrases of “AAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH” punctuated by little squeals. Incidentally, you have little control over the volume of your voice… ESPECIALLY at 4:00 AM.
The best part of this new phase of verbosity is that we found that we can make you laugh. Well, we can make you laugh a little bit when we play games with you or make silly faces at you. YOU, however, make yourself crack up and OH YES, we caught that on camera. Full on baby belly laughs at yourself. Your father and I were so excited at this event that we actually high-fived each other. It won’t be long before you find out your parents are a couple of nerds.
Your smiles are heartbreakingly beautiful, and when I see you smile at me it completes my day. Instead of being a once-a-week phenomenon, you smile multiple times a day now. It is so much more fun now that you have grown into such a little person, an actual baby that responds to my voice and touch. You are so pleasant now, and it takes all my resolve not to nibble off your nubby little ears, or your nose, or your scrumptious rosy cheeks.
You still adore the changing pad and your bouncy chair. You are starting to like your new Bumbo chair as well, but you tire of it sooner than anything else. I’ve been working on Tummy Time with you to strengthen your arms, but you really don’t seem to like it much at all. More than five minutes results in thunderous squawks of displeasure that quickly degrade into full-on fury if I don’t flip you onto your back PRONTO.
Speaking of fury, I think you have started to realize the power of the tantrum. I can’t tell if you are throwing actual tantrums yet, or if your outbursts are just leftovers from the first two months of screaming. Chances are, you probably have inherited a stubborn dislike of change from your father…and you’ve inherited your method of expressing your unhappiness from your mother. Sorry kiddo, you aren’t going to be a pretty crier… you get the red, blotchy cry face from me.
Our first Christmas with you was a lot of fun, even if you were too young to truly understand what all was going on. You were transfixed by the lights on the Christmas tree at Oma and Ditdit’s house. You also seem to enjoy all your new toys (at least the ones we were able to haul home). We’ll be teaching you all about the meaning of Christmas when you are old enough to understand that it is not just about fruitcake, egg nog, cookies, candy, or toys. In a way, I don’t want to spoil your understanding of Christmas when you are young, but I cannot WAIT to use the anticipated appearance of Sinterklaas as leverage to get you to behave yourself when you are older.
By the way, I cannot thank you enough for being the best infant EVER on that long, long Christmas trip. I was NOT looking forward to traveling nine-plus hours with you in the car seat that you oh so hate. But you know what? It wasn’t that big of a deal, you took it all in stride and really didn’t spend much time crying. THANK YOU, REESE.
We’ve had a lot of fun with you this month. I’m excited for the next month of life with you, as I can only expect that we’ll see you learning and doing so many more things. You continue to grow and thrive just like you should, and even this little congestive cold you seemed to have picked up this weekend hasn’t really bothered you much. Every morning I pick you up and I swear I can feel you growing heavier and more dense, and every morning you smile so big and giggle and gleefully frog-kick your hello to me. It’s that sort of greeting in the morning that makes me dread the idea of having to go back to work and miss all this.
Love,
Momma