Du Wax Loolu: Two months

Dear Callum,

Today you are two months old. When I sat down to write this letter and started sorting through photos, I realized how incredibly glad I am that I have a blog to document this stuff--because it's only been two months and yet you've changed so much already that I have trouble remembering parts of what it was like when you were completely brand-new.

When I sat down to write your one-month letter I wondered how, in the future, I would know what to write about each month. How I would know what had changed from month, where you had been and where you were going. But now I know that you will always change from month to month, and I will always be able to follow along. It doesn't make me sad that you change, because even though we lose pieces of who you were, we gain so much more. You just get better and better, and we know it's going to continue like that.

This past month you really started smiling. You smile when I come in to get you out of your crib in the morning. You smile when we pick you up. You smile on the changing table, in your car seat, on your activity mat, in our laps. You smile at us pretty much whenever we smile at you. And, for the first time, just the other day, you smiled at a stranger because she smiled at you first.

You've also become incredibly chatty this month. You coo and gurgle and babble and shriek. You make noise whenever you see something exciting or interesting, which at this point is pretty much everything, including the ceiling. Sometimes you make these noises in response to us talking to you, and I swear it sounds like you're trying to answer, like you think you're talking.

In the past few weeks you've gotten really into your activity mat. You absolutely love lying there, batting at the toys with your hands and feet. Sometimes you get so excited that you wave all four of your limbs at once, and from across the room it looks like the entire activity mat is rocking. You can stay that way for close to an hour, vastly entertained and not at all bored. I keep thinking we need to switch out the toys on that thing to change it up for you--and we will--but for now you seem more than satisfied with the same old toy rotation every day.

You desperately want to roll over. You did it once, at 5 weeks, but that was just a fluke, and I'm pretty sure you weren't even trying when you did it. You were just on your belly and then a second later, on your back. Now, however, you WANT it... but you can't quite seem to recreate it. When we put you down on your belly, the flailing and grunting begins immediately. You wave your legs desperately in the air and push with your arms until you're stuck on your side. Then you grunt and shriek desperately, but you still aren't quite to the point of pushing yourself over to the other side. My guess is that it's coming very soon, though.

You're still growing like a weed. I took you for a quick self-weigh earlier this week and you came in at exactly 13 pounds, putting you in the 70th percentile. You are also very long. It seems like we just retired your newborn-size sleep sacks because you no longer had room to stretch out your legs in them, and now your feet are coming very close to the bottom of the small-size sleep sacks as well. We have retired a good chunk of your 0-3 month clothing, and find ourselves digging into the 3-6 month drawer more and more. Your growth is no surprise, though, given how much you eat. You're taking upwards of 30 ounces of formula per day, in addition to nursing. The beautiful thing is that you've started taking more food at each feeding, and eating fewer times per day. This is especially awesome at night, when you often (though not always) give us 5- or 6-hour uninterrupted stretches of sleep, and one glorious night, you slept straight through from 11 to 7.

By now it's undeniable that you are infatuated with your dad. Whenever he gives you a bottle, you stare up into his face the whole time. His voice soothes you and you stop fussing when he picks you up. When he holds you, you smile and coo, and though you can sleep anywhere, you never look as peaceful as when you're sleeping in his arms. You're a dead ringer for him, too--and by now I'm almost positive your hair is red, like his when he was a kid.

You are still an incredibly laid back baby. You truly never fuss unless you're hungry or covered in bodily fluids. Even a massively wet or dirty diaper isn't enough to bother you--only if it leaks all over your clothing, or you spit up all over yourself, will you get annoyed enough to fuss. In generally you are one of the happiest, calmest babies I've ever seen. And have I mentioned how adorable you are? Because you are also most definitely one of the cutest babies I've ever seen.

When I look at you I sometimes have trouble believing that you are the baby I was pregnant with all that time. You are the baby we dreamed about and planned for and couldn't wait to meet. And now that we've met, you are this real little person, with feelings and opinions and personality. You are a person all your own, and we are so lucky that we get to know you and love you and be with you every day.