theology&geometry

Dear Squirmy Worms:

YOU HAVE A TOOOOOOOTH!

Scratch that. You have TWOOOO TOOOOOOTHS!

You have been drooling and gumming on things for weeks now, and battling with some brief moments of out-of-character grumpiness, so we knew this was inevitable. We just didn’t know how quickly it would happen! We were in Nashville last weekend visiting friends and Kristin and I just happened to spot a little white nub on your bottom gum. And we saw a companion tooth ready to sprout up right beside it. You like to have the spot rubbed or to have nice cool things to chew on. I treated you to a little Orajel and you thought that was totally weird. Here it is a week later and both teeth have broken through the skin and you are being a pretty good sport about it most of the time, I have to say.

What a month we’ve had! You have gone from having thick dark hair at birth to being almost completely bald (except for your rat rattail) to now having a soft head of light brown hair (and, yes, a rattail). You finally went up to size 2 diapers (even if they are a little big on you) and are probably ready to have your cloth diapers adjusted to go up a size but your mother is putting that off until the last second because that shit is ANNOYING. You can still squeeze into some of your 3-month onesies but you are pretty much into your 6-month clothes now (especially when you have your bulky cloth diapers on). You’re eating more now and are often not satisfied — especially at bedtime — with a piddly 4 ounces. You’re much more happy with 5 to 6 ounces.

Nursing is still going well but you are now getting several bottles of formula during the week. There is just no way, it seems, for me to be able to pump the 15-20 ounces you eat while I am at work. And that’s OK. I do the best I can and you don’t seem to have a food preference as long as you’re getting fed. You still switch easily from bottle to boob and that is such a relief.

Speaking of getting fed, we tried peas this month! You were not too keen on them. Your grandpa thinks that’s because I fed them to you at 7 in the morning but I figure you don’t know that peas aren’t a breakfast food. I got it on video, look!

You also ate plenty more bananas this month, but I think you still aren’t sure if you like them or not. You’re still not quite sure what to do with food that gets into your mouth. You mostly act like you wish it would get out of your mouth and not by way of your throat. You spend a lot of time tonguing your little tooth nubs so perhaps learning to do the chewing and swallowing motions isn’t really at the forefront of your mind at this time. It seems like you prefer gnawing on whatever you can get your hands on. You like your Sophie giraffe that Aunt Vicki gave you and you like shoving stuffed animals into your mouth.

We’ve been doing sit-ups to work on strengthening your core. Mama should be doing these too to work on her “waist” since it’s hidden beneath a generous layer of blubber, but who has the time? You’re rolling over halfway now and are much more amiable during tummy time, and you can sit up with some assistance and for extremely brief periods by yourself, but then you just sort of fold in half and it’s kind of funny and then I feel bad for laughing. You like standing in my lap and looking all around the room and then checking back in with me and smiling big. You get a kick out of the kitties when they pass by and every now and then one of them comes close enough for you to grab, and I tell you all about how soft their fur is. You pretty much think your daddy is the best thing in the world and he returns the sentiment.

You’re a real talker these days. Your language is getting more complex and you’re speaking using multiple syllables and raspberries. I swear the other day at Kristin’s — the day after we found your toofs — you mimicked something Amber said to you. She kept saying “take it” to you so you’d grab a toy out of her hand and you mouthed something that sounded so close to that. And then you did it again! This is not like those people who think their dogs are saying “I love you.” This is really you learning how to talk! You are a real-life Furby! (I will pause for you to Google “Furby”. I am assuming “Google” is familiar to you despite our age difference.)

We’ve learned that you are ticklish!

Earlier in the month, the family came and helped us set up a booth at a local art walk. I was a little worried you’d get tired of the whole scene, but you were so fantastic and you loved being outside all day! You just chilled and sat in laps and watched the trees and the people. You only fussed a couple of times and that’s because you were hungry. So I fed you, you dozed for a bit, and then woke up curious about what you’d missed. Everyone was amazed at how laid-back you were. I kept wondering aloud what planet you were from because you are not of this earth. Seriously, you’re like this cute little observer alien who is just here to learn our ways. Which, yeah, I guess you sort of are.

You went to your first wedding this month! You should have gone to TWO weddings this month but we had a spell of the grumps shortly before Jen and Brian’s wedding, so we stayed at home so you wouldn’t be loud and grumpy through the whole thing. You were in much better spirits before Zach and Laurel’s wedding so you got to go to the zoo for the first time and see a polar bear swimming and eating fish. You seemed to think that was pretty cool (and mama did too). The whole thing at the zoo after dark felt pretty ritzy and mama would have gone to town at the cheese table but you were a little cranky there at the end and it was your bedtime, so we skedadaddled a little early.

We made our second trip to Nashville, as I’ve already mentioned, and you got to meet some more honorary aunts and uncles. You conked out and mama stayed outside to catch up with old friends, like old times. Except this time there was a baby monitor on the porch. We went to the Nashville farmers market and you just took it all in from your vantage point in the stroller. A couple of ladies at one stall just went crazy over you and you laughed it up for them. It was a whirlwind trip (they all are) but we will be back in the next few months to meet and see even more friends.

On May 2, your cousin Levi was born! He is a real cutie pie and you two are going to be good friends. You haven’t met him yet but you will once your aunt and uncle are settled at home and have had some time to rest and recuperate. You’ll probably recognize some of your clothes on him over the years because we are having SO MUCH FUN cleaning out the closet periodically and having someone to give all that stuff to! I hope some day you and Levi are good friends and spend lots of time on the farm together.

Yesterday we had a big day for your half-year birthday, and you went to your first museum ever: The Ornamental Metal Museum. We checked out all the neat metal pieces and the sculpture garden, and then sat there by the river for a little bit. It was pretty; I had never been before but had always really wanted to go. One of these days we’ll take you to watch the blacksmiths doing their work, probably when you’re in the thick of your banging-on-everything phase so you’ll be sure to appreciate it. Then later in the evening we went and had dinner at Amanda and Brandon’s and you got to hang out with your friend Eliza. We ate pork tacos at dusk under strands of white lights and I let you have a little bit of avocado. Lo and behold, you seemed to like it.

Looks like mama dropped the ball this month and took mostly cellphone photos. Oops! Oh well.

Ol’ Yeller:

My sincere apologies on the extreme lateness of this post. We have been incredibly busy and there’s just not been a lot of time to write. But that’s because we have been having so much fun!

This month you found your voice. I mean, really found it. You learned that you like to shriek and holler, and you are no stranger to very loud grunting when you’ve got, uh, business to take care of. Business that you only take care of once or twice a week. But it’s BIG business, if you catch my drift. In fact, just the other day you did your business in the bath tub. I was just sitting there, watching you grunt-splash, doing mental math on how long it had been since I had changed a poopy diaper. It’s like you read my mind, Buds! I didn’t know what to do so I hollered for your daddy to come clean up the mess, and I took you in the nursery and let you finish your important business on the changing table. You didn’t seem to feel inconvenienced in the slightest.

This month you were a smiling machine. You are such a happy baby! You only really complain when you’re having a shirt pulled over your head or when mama is taking too long to whip the ol’ boobs out. You have this funny little staccato cough-whine that you have had since very early on that clearly means “Stop fiddling with your shirt and let’s do this! I’m HONGRY.”

I have had a rough time being away from you so much this month, Holden. I started back at the office full time and I have your picture at my desk, and while I am glad your daddy is taking care of you so that you don’t have to go to daycare just yet, it is still bittersweet to be the one bringing home the bacon instead of the one changing your diaper and trying to coax naps out of you all evening. I would much rather hang out with you all day, even when you’re grumpy and I’m exhausted. My wacky hours means I miss your bathtime and bedtime all week, so I just get a precious few hours with you in the morning and early afternoon (unless I am scheduled for earlier than 1, which happens occasionally) and then you are in bed by the time I get home at night. It’s weird coming home to a house and having to be Very Quiet so as to not wake the baby, but that’s how you live with a baby in a tiny house. You’re pretty much sleeping through the night every night now, from around 9:30 until 5 or 6 a.m. This is wonderful, of course, but a little bit of a challenge for me when I work until midnightish, which is at least twice a week. Getting home, getting to bed, and then getting up with you all within the span of five or six hours is tough, but pretty much manageable when we get to take a morning nap. I just can’t sacrifice our morning time together by letting your dad take the morning shift, Buds. Sleeping in ain’t worth missing out on your wakeup smiles, which are so wide and so genuine, and always accompanied by vigorous kicks and stomps of the mattress.

There are plenty of times when you wake up in the middle of the night and you either jabber or stomp yourself back to sleep. I have seen you stomp in your sleep, even, which is bizarre and funny. Sometimes you will jabber until you start to sound annoyed, and then I come in to see what the problem is. It has been a learning process for me trying to navigate when you need me and when you don’t. You so rarely wake up crying, which is the obvious time for me to come in and scoop you up. I have had to learn to just back off and let you chit chat with yourself for a while. You don’t need me to hover all the time and when you do, you let me know. That means you often talk to yourself for half an hour or 45 minutes before deciding you’d like some company. It’s pretty adorable but I am biologically wired to not be able to sleep when you are awake, so I basically just lie there and listen to you carry on via the monitor at 3 a.m. I wonder what you’re talking about in there.

This month we had our first-ever away from home overnighter! We traveled to Shiloh to watch Paw and Grammy renew their vows, and you were such a trooper. You snoozed on Aunt Cathie’s shoulder much of the time, even through a storm and the sounds of gunshots and the orchestra. That night you and I slept in the guest bed and you were so pooped you barely moved, except for your invisible inching toward me so that I eventually had to scoop you up and move you back toward your side, or else I was going to fall off the bed. How’s THAT for a co-sleeping switcheroo? I don’t think you would have woken up at all if not for that, honestly. I took care to keep your bedtime routine pretty much as intact as possible, including bathing you in your whale tub. But you fell asleep before I could read you a book.

You spend your days with daddy taking walks to the park or going to the library. Sometimes daddy texts me pictures of you and what you’re doing. You two have a good time and you think he is pretty much the funniest person on the planet. I caught you yukking it up at him the other day:

You love watching him pretend to get hit, punched, or kicked. I am fascinated by how you would know that these things are funny. You still have the new baby smell; how do you understand slapstick humor?!

Weekends are really special for us now. It’s pretty much just you and me from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night, since daddy works a lot of hours on the weekends. You and I run lots of errands together and when I am feeling particularly brave (and desperate for groceries) I haul you to Walmart for a shopping spree. You are usually a good sport about that these days. You used to get fussy when the cart would stop, so checking out was terrifying. But more and more you’re able to see what’s around you and you are so into watching everything. Everywhere we go, people are just so smitten by those blue eyes and that sweet smile.

That definitely seems to be your thing: Observing. You are pretty much content to just lie on your back and look at stuff rather than struggle to move around too much. You love to kick but you aren’t too interested in trying to roll over and scoot right now.

What else? Oh yes. We gave you your first taste of solids — bananas — and you were pretty okay with it. We’ve not done much other experimentation but that will probably be the big story of month six, which I’ll be writing pretty soon (and hopefully with a bit more timeliness than this entry).

The weather has warmed up (we had SUCH a warm March) so we’ll be getting outside more and more (as soon as mama re-orders her stash of Skin So Soft). I’m looking forward to taking you to the Shell and letting you sit in the grass and listen to music ith all your new friends we’ve met these past few months. And we’re going to go to the zoo and all kinds of stuff. Get ready, Mr. B!

Okay, not really. But he does eat some! And he seems to dig ‘em:

Friday night. Taking a break at work while I wait on my pages to get the go-ahead. Coffee to prop up droopy eyelids, even though that’s ill-advised at 10:30 when I know I’ll be trying to sleep in two hours. I spent my entire morning and afternoon chasing naps after Holden decided 4 a.m. was as good a time as any to get up. That boy has put us through the ringer this week in the sleep department. We got spoiled to his sleeping 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. thing, even if 6 is painfully early for me to rise after getting home so late. But this week something’s up: At least two nights he woke up every 2-3 hours, and not because he was hungry. Just because he wanted to party. Buds McKenzie, you know better than that!

I am trying to get psyched up for the weekend. We’re hitting the road tomorrow morning and heading to Shiloh, where my dad will be taking part in the huge 150th anniversary to-do. Of course he wants me to photograph the battles and encampments at the crack of dawn, but there is no way that’s feasible for me and I’ve tried to explain that to him so he won’t be disappointed. I remind him often that back in November, remember that time I had a baby? Yeah, he is still here, the baby, and he is in charge, and he does not want to go hang out in a grassy, hot-ass field all day while the dulcet tones of gunfire and cannon shots echo around us. My one clear objective for the day is to photograph Mom and Dad’s vow renewal ceremony, which is taking place after the battles end and before the big ball begins. It’s where all the men in their dressy wool with brass buttons and the ladies in their giant hoop skirts and lace will join hands and dance a respectable distance from one another. My parents are going to do this thing in full period regalia, a fact I have repeated to people around me a dozen times and the novelty never seems to wear off. They’ve been planning it since their 25th anniversary but time got away from them. This year’s the year, though!

Then we are going to attempt our first overnighter away from home because I am 100 percent positive I am going to be exhausted and have a major headache by the evening. The prospect of an overnighter away from home is sort of terrifying but a little less so thanks to our week of broken, weird sleep patterns that have spooked me out of my hard-won comfort zone. If ever there’s a time to break routine, I guess this is it. Our bedtime routine is pretty sacred so I wonder to what degree Holden being away from his bed and his creature comforts will result in his not understanding that it’s time to sleep for a long time. On the other hand, the bedtime routine could be total superstition on our part, but I’ve been too paranoid to break it or else risk a completely sleepless night.

My parents are giddy at the prospect of getting to spend more than just a few hours with him, which is sweet. They speak often of longing for the days when he can spend weeks in the summer on the farm. That’s all well and good but he is NOT ALLOWED to ride four-wheelers until he’s 30. Okay? Okay. AND KEEP HIS TINY BABY HANDS AWAY FROM THOSE HORSES’ MOUTHS!

It would be really great if Sunday could be extra laid back and leisurely, with me catching up on five months’ worth of lost sleep while the family passes the baby around while sipping tall sweating glasses of sweet tea out on the veranda beneath the whirring fans, but I am not delusional enough to think that’s a possibility at this age. Also we don’t have a veranda with a fan; this isn’t The Help. I am sort of diplomatically letting go of the notion of ever being able to truly relax again. At least not until he’s grown.

I love the part at 1:26 where he’s like, “O RLY?!”

I look at Holden and I still cannot believe he is here. That he is so beautiful and so sweet and so smiley and so ours. It is amazing and heartbreaking all at once to know how differently things could have gone, how he could have not ever come into my life.

I read a blog by a local woman who has been trying for years to have a baby — I’m talking multiple rounds of very expensive fertility treatments and plenty of loss and heartache — and not too long ago announced that she’s finally for-real pregnant, going on twenty weeks. I lurk so I’m not going to link, but suffice it to say that when she finally got her Big Fat Positive, I was pumping my virtual fist for her. She writes with excitement but just under the surface is, I think, great trepidation and the fear that at any moment, everything could go horribly wrong. She shared a link to a blog post where a couple is mourning the loss of their twins, who were born at 19 weeks, 5 days. They were too small to survive, born just shy of the mark where modern medicine — marvel that it can be — can give a severely premature baby a significant fighting chance. I read this and got choked up and had to click off.

There’s also a woman here in town who lost her baby boy at 35 weeks. There was an accident with the cord in utero and he suffocated. He had a name and a room and he just did not make it here, into this world. That is so difficult to imagine. The randomness of it seems cruel.

We were spooked when we found out Holden had a single umbilical artery. I had this vision of him being trapped in there like a scuba diver with a single constricted air tube being the only thing keeping him alive. When he came out, I could only hold him at mid-chest level because the cord was too short for me to hold him up to get a good look at him. I spent my first few minutes with him gazing at the top of his head, so full of hair, just listening to his little whimpers. I was overwhelmed with relief that he had made it out okay. Our midwife inspected the placenta and said she’d never seen anything quite like it. She showed me how the cord was inserted on the side instead of smack in the middle like most placentas and cords were attached. We found out later that this particular condition has a name: velamentous cord insertion. A single umbilical artery can lead to uterine growth restriction, and a velamentous cord insertion can rupture and lead to stillbirth or, according to that Wikipedia page (I know, I know), fetal death during labor. Together, the baby’s full-term existence just seemed … precarious.

And yet there was my baby boy. So strong. He was and is small, possibly from the SUA giving him a bit of a slow start, but he is perfect. He came a few days early, and sometimes I wonder if it’s because the placenta and cord were beginning to not be able to provide for him anymore and he just decided to come on out so he could get fed for real. I say “he” but I don’t even know what I’m referring to here. Obviously he wasn’t in there pulling a ripcord. If I were religious, I’d say God went ahead and shoved him out of the plane with his chute ready to go, so to speak. I guess I really just mean “nature,” “hormones,” “instinct.” Whatever set the whole ball rolling. I don’t know. That mercurial, churning force that propels life forward but also destroys it. That thing.

That day, that force worked the way one always hope it will. It could have just as easily gone the other way because life is not fair and life often introduces such throbbing heartache when you’re expecting radiant joy. I am so grateful that my boy got here safely in spite of a couple of what could have been major biological setbacks. I aim that gratitude at whatever creative entity is out there and willing to take it. I realize that sounds hokey in an “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual” way, but that’s not how I mean it. I mean it in a “I want to beam this gratitude into the universe as hard as I possibly can so there is no mistaking how thankful I am for my baby’s healthy existence” way. It is the most pure form of gratitude I have ever known.

Moldy Old Holdie:

Two things.

One. Sorry about the new nickname. I don’t know how it happened or where exactly it came from, but I use it sparingly so as to not dent your delicate sense of self-esteem, which I imagine is forming as we speak. You are not moldy or old; you smell wonderful (usually — we’ll get to that in a minute) and you are still very young and sparkly and new. It’s just that it rolls off the tongue so nicely.

Two. Sorry this post is late. Like, a whole freaking week late. I wanted to start it two weeks ago so as to finish and post it on your birthday, but didn’t, and then I went back to the office full time on Monday, and that experience is currently ROCKING MY WORLD and not exactly in the good way. Just in the Oh my gahhh how do people do this?! THERE ARE NO MORE HOURS LEFT way that every working parent must adjust to. Ahem.

So here we are at the end of your fourth month with us and you are still THE BEST BABY IN THE WORLD, except for those several nights lately when you have decided you wanted to wake up at 2 or 4 a.m. and be all adorable and shit and make it really hard for your mama and your daddy to not engage so you wouldn’t think it was wake-up time. On those nights, you became simply The Best Baby in the World, No Shouting. Because no one wins any awards at 4 a.m. You were just trying to get a little extra milk those early mornings, I think, so you could go ahead and round out that growth spurt you were going through. That growth spurt now has you clocking in at 11 pounds, 14 ounces, and 24.25 inches long. Your head is 40 centimeters around. Is that good? I don’t know. But it’s a nice round number for a nice round head. A head that has a ridiculous, patchy hairdo and a sort of rattail mullet, now that so much of the side and the top has rubbed away. It’s really pretty cute but I’m excited for your hair to grow in for real some day. Will it be the same color?

You are growing long and lean like your daddy, kiddo. This amazes me every day, since I have never been either lean or long and no one else in my family has either. You’re in the 7th percentile for your weight and the 47th for your height, according to your four-month checkup. You’re still a little squirt (which total strangers love to remark on) but Dr. Hanson says you’re doing great. You spent several minutes the other day laughing at him, even though he wasn’t even trying to be funny. But that is just how you are, baby boy. Bright eyed and happy. You laid there on the paper-covered exam table and kicked and kicked, just happy as could be. And then we let them stick you with needles and you got super pissed. Can’t say I blame you. Pretty cruel bait and switch, if you ask me. But you recovered nicely and now you won’t get the polio, yay!

This month you continued your quest to gain control of your hands and make them do your bidding. You often sit with your hands clasped politely together (see above), perched just inside your mouth, as you watch whatever’s going on in front of you. We can now hold something fun out in front of you and you will reach out and grab it, if it interests you, bringing it straight to your mouth to take the place of your hand. Sometimes you reach out but you miss your target and bring back empty hands to your mouth. Hey, it’s cool. You’re new at this depth perception thing. You have this cool ball Aunt Megan got for you that you have a love-hate relationship with. You love to grab on to it but you get SO PISSED that you can’t get it into your mouth. I often have to take it away from you before you get too mad at it.

You’ve become a real talker — you just coo and blabber and shriek to us and, much of the time, to yourself, when you’re sitting idle. You’re still kinda snorty and snotty (that has never gone away, ever) so you often make this yodeling gurgle noise from deep in your throat. Recently you discovered your tongue and I see you rolling it around in your mouth, feeling the contours of your gums. Just the other day you noticed your feet and stared at them intently when they moved slightly, as if to say, “Wait, those belong to ME?!” Soon enough you are going to figure out how to get those things into your mouth. Big fun ahead for you.

Getting you to laugh is like my daily holy grail. The first time I heard you really laugh, full-throated and with total delight, was when your Aunt Kristin came to visit and she was talking about sounds monkeys make. And you just went bananas for that. Your daddy and I have gotten you to laugh while pretending to barf, which is pretty hilarious considering how much you love barfing. You laugh a lot when I whip my head back and forth and make crazy noises with my eyes bugged out, but doing that too much gives me a headache. Actually, maybe that’s what you think is so funny.

Too bad that when I get my phone out to capture your shenanigans, the party usually stops and you become very stonefaced. So I don’t have a good video of a really good laugh session. This is about as close as I have gotten:

I’ll get a really good one, though. Oh, I’ll get one.

We did a fair amount of socializing this month. We went to Daphne’s birthday party one Saturday, and then you stayed with Amanda and Brandon and Eliza for a few hours another Saturday so your daddy and I could go see his alma mater beat his other alma mater. He’s so excited for you to get to come to a game with us but you’re still a little too small for that.

Also, your Aunt Krissie and Aunt Vicki threw us a shindig this month and we got to see so many of our family and friends and had such a big time. It was really sweet of them to do that, and I’m so happy and grateful that you are so loved that so many would come out to see you and say hello. You were so good about being passed around until you got tired out and had to go conk out for a long nap. Truth be told, I would have conked out for a nap too but that would have been rude.

Everywhere we go, people talk about your big bright eyes and how observant you are for your age. You love to sit up and look around, just drinking the whole world in. You’ve got the neck control down so well that we’ve started sitting you in your Bumbo chair to hang out with us. I even bought a tray for it so that you can have your toys in front of you and pick which one you want to gnaw on.

Early this month I started back to work, but from home. It was pretty weird being in the same house as you but not being able to hang out with you all the time like usual. Your daddy took you on adventures to the library and to the park and to lunch with a friend while I helped make the newspaper from a laptop on the dining room table. I had to hand over bedtime routine duties, which was hard at first (for me) but you took to it like a champ. Daddy is better at bedtime storytelling anyway. I found out the other day that I had been calling your bath duck by the wrong name — he’s not Officer Duck. He’s Detective Duck and your octopus is Officer Octopus. Duh. Sometimes at night I would take a break from work and lean on the wall next to the hallway and listen to daddy read you your bedtime stories. He does the best voices, huh? And he’s not a bad singer, either.

Now, I have to talk about things that are somewhat unpleasant, but pretty funny. This may embarrass you but always remember that you can blog about my hilarious descent into old age some day. I am giving you permission now. In fact, I will go ahead and reserve the ShitDementiaPatientsSay Tumblr for you and leave the password in a lockbox.

[POOP DISCLAIMER FOR PEOPLE WITHOUT CHILDREN OR ANYONE WHO JUST DOESN'T WANT TO READ ABOUT MY CHILD'S BOWEL MOVEMENTS, WHICH I IMAGINE IS A LOT OF YOU]

Remember how I said you have a lovely smell? That is usually true, except this month your farts starting smelling TERRIBLE. I first noticed — and get ready for some trashy information to follow — while we were at THE LIQUOR STORE. That’s right, mama was buying booze with you in her arms. The scandal! We were there with Kristin getting a bottle of wine for ourselves and I smelled something rank and thought to myself, Man, someone totally cut one. Then it happened again while we were getting into the car and I thought, Man, Kristin must be having some stomach troubles. It wasn’t until that night when I was nursing you before bed, back in the nursery, that I smelled that smell again and I realized that it was YOU. Before, your poop and your farts had smelled faintly like buttermilk, just wonderfully inoffensive. But you hadn’t pooped in, like, a week or so by then. Which is totally normal, by the way. But it was new for you. I guess it never occurred to me that your not pooping for several days at a time would amount to stinkier emissions. And then, when your body decided to give the ol’ waste a good heave-ho, one massive, smelly mount of poop in your diaper. That special delivery came while I was in the shower and you were hanging out in your bouncy seat nearby. I got out and picked you up and smelled something not quite right. A smell I had never smelled before. And sure enough when I opened up your diaper, there was poop from your navel to the top of your buttcrack. You seemed pretty relieved and I took a picture and sent it to your dad. Because that is who we have become, Holden. Poop-photographing maniacs.

So that seems to be how you do this pooping thing now. No pooping for several days, farts get super smelly, HUGE POOP, and scene. It’s sort of like a game of Old Maid, seeing who ends up with the poop diaper, me or your dad. I’d really prefer it if you could poop several small, smell-free times a day again. Can you work on that? No? Okay. But I had to ask.

[POOP TALK IS OVER ... FOR NOW]

You’re slowly but surely growing out of your 3-month clothes. They fit widthwise but are getting a little snug in length. So a wardrobe change is in order. Guess it’s time to pull out the clothes we already have and start picking out the next sizes. That’s way more fun than I thought it would be, honestly. Know what else is kinda fun? Shopping with a baby. Without a baby, people just think your crazy mother is talking to herself. With you around, I can jabber all I want and everyone assumes I’m talking to the baby. Score one for mama.

The weather is warming up and, even though we didn’t really have much of a true winter, I am excited for you to experience your first spring. The warm breeze, the colorful flowers, dirt in your hands, the sounds of the outdoors, the green leaves all around, the screaming and running your mother will do the first time a bumblebee darts toward her as she is holding you — the whole bit. It’s going to be fun, baby buds. I’m so happy to get to show the world to you. And you to the world.

We’ve savored every moment, can you tell?

His daddy got him to laugh before I did, and so did Aunt Kristin when she visited over the weekend. But I finally got him to laugh at me on purpose and on camera today, after many, many attempts involving ridiculous noises and faces. Filmed surreptitiously because as soon as the phone gets in his line of sight, he freezes.

I just finished my first full week back on the clock. My boss mercifully is letting me work from home this month, and my workload all week was pretty light so I could get adjusted to being back. And so I could work out the technological kinks involved with a remote login (and there were plenty of technological kinks, but mostly in the form of my router dying midweek and then my new one coming with a crappy LAN cable that made setting it up particularly frustrating). I worked in the dining room the first two days, the nursery the third day, and the office the fourth and fifth days, since working in the nursery wasn’t exactly an option, given that I have a child who goes to bed during my shift. Working in an office sounds nice in theory, but in reality I was only technically inside the door of the office, which is as far as I could get the cable to stretch. It put me a foot from the litter box, which reminded me of the last time I had a major internet meltdown and had to temporarily make do with a rigged connection. Why do I always end up with a temporary setup so near the litter box? This question perplexes me.

Anyway, blah blah blah. I am caffeinated.

Holden has been a champ this week and gone to sleep right on time for his daddy, who has kept our routine intact (with just a few minor changes, some of which involve him reading different books — and doing voices! — at bedtime). Sometimes Holden’s so tired he falls asleep mid-bottle.

It has not been easy, emotionally, for me to pry myself from him for even a few hours in the evening. I sneak away from my desk whenever I get a chance to so I can snuggle him or nurse him, if I have time and he’s hungry. But his daddy is in charge of the nighttime routine now, and goodness, I did not realize how much I would miss giving my baby a bath and putting him to bed. I ache when I think about how in just a few weeks, I won’t even be in the same house to hear him cooing or splashing around in the tub. I will be miles away, banging out pages on a computer in a cubicle. Boo hoo.

I’m so fortunate to still have a job, and I am grateful for the flexibility my bosses have shown during this transition. No question about that. I’m just having a hard time with the separation. We have mornings together, and he wakes up smiling and hungry and so very sweet. But letting go of evenings is hard. I guess it will make my weekends at home that much more precious.