Four months

Dear Callum,

Today you are four months old. That hardly sounds newborn-ish anymore. And you really aren't so newborn-ish anymore yourself. It's a little terrifying, but mostly awesome.


This month you took a break from rolling over for a few weeks, and when you started doing it again you had a whole new technique. Whereas before you just pushed with your arms until you rolled, now you lift your entire head and chest and twist them until they flop around the lower half of your body and you wind up on your back. It's very acrobatic.


You're also really into your arms and legs recently. You do quite a bit of arm-waving and leg-thrashing. You're just starting to notice your feet--just this past weekend I noticed you grabbing your toes with your hands for the first time ever. I imagine it won't be long before those toes find their way into your mouth. You also sit up with just a little bit of support, but you don't display a whole lot of interest in that position, so it may be awhile before you find the motivation to sit up on your own.


You love to talk. You babble and shriek constantly. Sometimes I'll call your grandma while you're hanging out on my lap, and when she picks up the phone, before I can even say hi you start chattering loudly in the background. When this happens, she always starts the conversation by saying, "Hi, Callum!" She and your grandpa are arriving later today for a visit, and I know they're very much looking forward to witnessing your baby talk in person. You're very social in general. You like to be held and you smile at pretty much everyone. But you reserve your most enthusiastic gestures for your dad and me--every time we come into your range of vision we are treated to a full-on display of laughing, squealing, and delighted arm-waving. It's a nice self-esteem boost, for sure.


The dog still ignores you, but by now the feeling is not mutual. When she walks by you turn your head to watch her, and we find you staring at her quite often. I'm sure it's nothing personal that she ignores you--but even if it were, it's likely to change soon, because we'll probably start giving you solid food sometime this month, and I'm pretty sure Montana will want to be present for feeding time as soon as she realizes what's happening. I personally still can't quite wrap my mind around the idea of you eating solid food, but I know your pediatrician recommends starting at 4 months. I've been researching the topic and plan to have a detailed discussion with her about this at your appointment later today.


You're still growing like a champ--90th percentile and above for everything, and wearing exclusively size 6-12 month clothing--and sleeping great. We weaned you off the swaddle last week, first by swaddling you with one arm out and then by giving it up altogether. At each step you woke up the first couple days at 6:30 a.m. before going back to your normal 8:30 wakeup. It was a surprisingly painless process, much better than when we tried this two months ago and you woke up at 1:30 a.m. three nights in a row until we went back to swaddling you.


You have sensitive skin, which according to your pediatrician is common in redheads like you, and so we are still lotioning you up twice a day, which seems to help. You get rashes and dry spots on your elbows, belly, and thighs. Your cradle cap is mostly gone, so that's nice, but we've noticed that if we ever put a disposable diaper on you, you develop diaper rash almost instantaneously. I had sensitive skin as a kid too, with a tendency toward eczema, so it looks like this is something we're going to have to be vigilant about with you.


You remain one of the most laid back babies I've ever encountered, but you do get a little bit fussy when things are out of the ordinary. We had dinner at a few different friends' houses this month, and each time you were a bit fussier than usual. You weren't sobbing inconsolably, but there were some angry shrieks and annoyed cries for no discernible reason. It seems like you've developed a sense of your surroundings and as a result we're seeing a preference for the familiar. And it seems to be specific to the environment, not the people--we left you with a babysitter for the first time this month so we could go to the U2 concert, and you were totally fine and not fussy at all. I guess you just like your own house! Nothing wrong with that... although we'd like to get you used to traveling sooner rather than later, if at all possible. I guess we should have you sleep in your Pack N Play at our own house a few times before we take you on the road, huh?


Things you're into lately include stuffing things into your mouth, toys that squeak or otherwise make noise, laughing when we kiss you, grabbing the blinds on the window over your changing table, sucking your thumb, your activity mat, and your dad. You love your dad so much. You squeal and laugh and wave your arms when you see him, and when he's moving around the room your eyes follow him everywhere he goes. You still look just alike, and seeing you together just kills me with sweetness, every time.


You already have so much personality, it's amazing. You just exude mellow happiness, and it doesn't take much to make you excited. I guess that makes sense when everything is still so new to you. You already seem kind of independent to me--you like to be held, especially when you're in a new place, but for the most part it almost seems like rather than specifically liking to be held, it's more that you don't mind it. I hold you as much as I can, but I envision that by the time you're a toddler you might not be the type of kid who's super into snuggling. Already when I cuddle you, most of the time you would rather look all around and flail than just snuggle with me. Even when I sing to you at bedtime, I've had to start lying you on my lap instead of holding you on my chest, because otherwise you look all around and bend over backward and generally get yourself totally stimulated and wide awake and not at all bed-ready.


You are still the cutest baby I've ever seen, and I say that with a complete lack of bias, as you can imagine. It doesn't hurt that you look like your dad and I think he's pretty cute too, but it's more than that--it's also the you-ness that radiates from your face and your mannerisms. You're already starting to grow up, and I'm totally OK with that because as you get bigger you make it clearer and clearer that your personality is just what this family needed. You fit right in, and we are so very happy to have you here with us.


Love,
Mama

Chub and pie (not related, though one might think otherwise)

First of all, I have an 18-pound baby. He is not even four months old yet, and he is 18 pounds and 26.5 inches long. As in, over 90th percentile for a four-month-old, an age that he is still eight days away from attaining. He is solidly in size 6-12 month clothing, and you guys, we own so much clothing for this child. His entire dresser is stuffed with 6-12 month clothing. The whole thing. I mean, the drawers barely open, they're crammed so full. And we paid for almost none of it; we have been so plied with lovely, generous gifts and hand-me-downs. I'm pretty sure this kid could wear a different outfit every single day for the first year of his life. And that seems to be my goal--he has a few outfits that I love and use regularly, but for the most part I try to make sure all the different items get a turn. Yes, I do care about fairness to inanimate objects, why do you ask?

Secondly, we had dinner with friends this weekend, and for it I made a lemon meringue pie. I used this recipe, except with milk instead of water, and I improved upon the last one by making my own crust this time (this one), and it turned out delicious. I always thought of lemon meringue as a fancy pie, but it's really not, and it's also one of the only non-chocolate pies that I like, and I think it will be one of my go-to desserts in the future, because yum. And also, it's not as greasy and unhealthy as some desserts. And the lemon filling is so tasty, and it looks so satisfying. See?


It's actually the egg yolk that makes it so yellow, not the lemon. And doesn't it look even better with the meringue on top? I like the contrast of the yellow and the white, so I took a photo break before I sealed the meringue up to the crust line for baking.


And the finished product was nicely golden and still fluffy:


Thirdly, we've done a ton of yard work, and things are starting to look really kind of lovely around here. My hands are not so lovely--scratched to crap from some bushes I pruned a little too zealously, with a couple of nasty blisters on my fingers--but I suppose that's just a sacrifice you have to make, right? And I should mention right here that Torsten was able to get our sprinkler system functioning by replacing heads and digging up pipes and whatnot all by himself, and we should really all note how incredibly handy he is, because he did awesome work and would probably like everybody to know about it.

Lastly, Callum has become increasingly annoyed about the concept of nursing recently, and at this point I'm more or less exclusively pumping. I can maybe get him to nurse for a couple minutes once every day or two, but that's it. I suppose I should be glad he hasn't decided to do this with his bottle instead of with the boob, given that if he gave up the bottle he would starve, but it's a little annoying to be pumping all the time when I only produce a couple ml, if that, at every session. My plan is to keep trying the nursing until his four-month birthday. After that, if he's still screaming every time I try, I think I'll be done. I'll stop trying to nurse him, and just pump a couple times a day for as long as I pull a few ml, and I presume my supply will dwindle pretty quickly, and then this breastfeeding adventure will be over, and that will be fine too. But we'll hope it goes a little better with the next kid, shall we?

Speaking of the chunkster, here he is, for your viewing pleasure. Clearly, his refusal to nurse isn't hurting him in the slightest.

Note the thigh rolls.

Baby keepsakes

I put together a box of keepsakes from Callum's babyhood. I will add anything else to it as I think of it, but for now it contains:

• My positive pregnancy tests (yes, I know, gross, pee, etc., but they're in a ziploc bag and they're meaningful so I kept them).
• My pregnancy journal (which includes photos of me throughout my pregnancy, as well as hospital bracelets and a birth announcement).
• A printout of the playlist we listened to on repeat during my labor.
• The newspaper (Denver Post) from the day he was born.
• All the cards people sent before and after he was born.
• The purple foam "goggles" he had to wear while he was on the biliblanket for his jaundice.
• A baby hat from the hospital.
• The "welcome to the world" card signed by President and First Lady Obama.

Is there anything else memorable or significant that should go in there that I'm not thinking of? For you parents out there, what keepsakes have you saved from when your kids were very little?

Cousins

Callum and my sister's baby, Morgan, haven't met yet, and I'm dying for it to happen, mostly because they're cousins and they should know each other but also partly because they're on opposite ends of the growth chart and I am just dying picturing the cuteness of Giant and Bitty side by side. In the meantime, I have to be content with photos of them in their Bumbos for comparative purposes. These were taken on the same day.


These babies are 1 month, 3.5 inches, and 8 pounds apart. It doesn't sound like that much (except maybe the poundage) but the difference in how far their heads and legs protrude from the Bumbo is pretty striking, at least in my opinion.

Can't wait for these two to meet in person! Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Springtime in the yard

First of all, I have to say, I don't know if it's because I've been living in some sort of new baby parallel universe, but while everyone else has been lamenting the weather, I've actually been feeling like this winter was... not so bad. I mean, yes, there have definitely been cold days and we did have one miserable snap when Callum was a week old (and of course exactly when my parents were here visiting) where the temperature was below zero and it was gray and snowy for days on end.

But overall it's been mild, I think. I'm pretty sure our average annual snowfall is around 60 inches, and I don't think we've gotten anywhere near that this year. We've had lots of sunny warm days, even shortly after Callum was born in January, where we were able to take him out in the stroller for walks. I've had a standing date with a woman from my childbirth class to go for a walk in the park once a week for over a month now, and we've had lovely weather for every single walk. We've even gotten some rain, which is a rare treasure here in semi-arid Colorado.

Anyway, with things feeling springlike for awhile now, we've taken the opportunity to do some work in our yard. Like homeowners. Adults. Isn't that weird?

It started with a few things: a gift, a Groupon, a gift card, and a windstorm. And now we are thinking of all sorts of things we'd like to do, and assessing which of those things could be feasible on our budget.

First, a very dear friend gave Callum a redbud tree as a baby gift. Actually, since she lives far away, she gave him a gift certificate to a fabulous local nursery with a request that we use it to purchase a redbud tree, which of course we did. It's now planted in the yard. It's still teeny, and just starting to bloom. Once all the blossoms open, we'll take a picture of Callum next to it, and turn that into an annual tradition so that we can watch him and the tree grow together. The same friend gave the same gift to my sister's baby, so Callum and Morgan can have matching redbud photos throughout their childhood.

Here's the tree currently:



Of course, while we were at the nursery we discovered all sorts of wondrous other plants and yard things that we'd love to have. So we had some discussion and decided that since someday when budget and time allow, we'd like to relandscape our yard completely, rather than planting a whole bunch of stuff in the meantime we would do one barrel of flowers on our front porch. So we did:


Then along came a Groupon for another local nursery. And once the redbud tree was planted, we thought wow, we should really put a couple more trees on the lawn so it doesn't look so bare. But not giant ones, because we don't want it to be overwhelmed. So maybe shrubs would work well. And the nursery just so happened to have lovely small lilac trees and snowball bushes for almost exactly the price of the Groupon:



Conveniently, some lights Torsten's parents bought us at Lowe's last year turned out not to be what we were looking for, so we returned them for a merchandise credit and used that gift card to buy some mulch and tree edging, as well as some fertilizer and grass seed so that we can reseed our yard, which as you can see is very much in need of it. We also finally got around to calling an irrigation company to check out the built-in sprinkler system in our yard, and learned that it seems to be nearly functional and should (knock on wood) be fully functional, or close to it, with just some minor repairs, which will hopefully be happening tomorrow.

We also pruned down our rosebushes and put new mulch in the front flower bed where the tulips grow (still waiting on them to bloom, but when they do, they'll be red and yellow):



And in the backyard, we had an awesome wildflower garden last year. Some of them are perennials but others are not, so we put down some fresh seed on top just to make sure it'll grow back nicely. Most of it still has a ways to go, but some lovely purplish blue flowers have already bloomed:


Oh, and the windstorm. Well, that sucked. We had a fence that looked like this (and still have this fence on one side of our yard):


But then it was super windy one night and when we woke up a giant panel from the fence on the other side of the yard had blown over and was lying in the grass. The whole fence was rickety and nearly 50 years old to begin with, so we knew it really just had to be replaced. Luckily our neighbor agreed, and there was no fighting or anything about who had to pay. We split the cost 50-50 for the side fence, and Torsten and I of course paid the full cost for the front part of the fence with the new gate, since that is on our property only, and just a few days later our fence looked like this:


Of course there are still a lot of other projects. Most of them we're holding off on because wow, this stuff is so expensive and time-consuming. But, Denver does an annual mulch giveaway for residents, all created from the Christmas tree pickup, and it's this weekend, so we're borrowing a neighbor's pickup truck and going to get as much mulch as we can carry, so we can mulch the treebeds by the driveway (and also maybe prune the bushes?)...


...and the treebeds where the aspens grow in the backyard:


Of course, there's one staple that we absolutely love and have no intention of changing, ever, and that's our willow tree:


Isn't it lovely?

What are you guys doing in your yards this spring? Or what would you like to be doing, if time and money were no object?

Listening

I need to blog more. I do. I miss it. And I don't want this blog to just be monthly letters to my baby. It would be nice if we also had some record of the stuff going on between the 24th of one month and the 24th of the next month, you know?

And there is stuff going on, but a lot of it is stuff that I can't really talk about here, and that pisses me off, and also I hate it when people go on about Unbloggable Things, and really, everything is fine, Callum is great and Torsten and I are great and things are good. But some of the non-baby details of our lives are things I don't really want to get into at the moment, but those are the same things that are on my mind a lot of the time, and therefore... silence.

Plus there are things going on in the world, and I don't really want to discuss my reaction to the Osama bin Laden thing in part because everyone's reactions seem to have turned into finger-pointing about everyone else's reactions, and I feel like we have now reached a point where if I say that my reaction was X, it will feel to people whose reactions were more like Y or Z like I am saying that X is the right reaction and Y and Z are the wrong reactions. And I don't feel that way. And I also don't fully know what my own reaction is. Suffice it to say that I have mixed feelings on a lot of counts. And I imagine that most other people do too.

You know, on September 11 I was in France. I had just moved there two weeks prior, I didn't really speak French yet, and because of the time difference the events of that day unfolded at three o'clock in the afternoon for me instead of first thing in the morning the way they did for most Americans, and really, the time of day isn't important but in my mind it seems important because that afternoon, the amount of the day that had already gone by, the classes I'd already gone through at school, the amount of sunlight that was shining when one of my French classmates came up to me in the school courtyard and tried to explain to me what had happened, with limited success because I didn't really speak French yet... all of those things are very intertwined with my memories of that day. Afternoon. Sun. Late in the daytime. A whole day of not knowing, already gone by, while in the US the day had barely started.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent but my point is, it happened when I was in France and I didn't get home after that for another nine months and when I got home things had changed drastically and I was startled at what felt like a very sudden change to me. And I sort of missed the more laid-back attitude of the French people I'd been surrounded with during the initial aftermath. I guess it felt, somehow, like there was more listening happening in France, and more talking happening in the US, and it was weird to go from one to the other. I liked the listening. I was there, listening. We were all listening, in France. Talking too, of course. But also listening.

And now, it's almost 10 years later and the President of the United States addresses the nation, the world really, to say that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and the reactions everywhere are varied in style but all quite intense. Torsten and I watched the news for awhile on Sunday night, I read some reactions on Twitter, and then we went to bed. Then yesterday morning I logged onto Facebook and at the top of my news feed was a comment from my French host brother which, loosely translated, read, "Obama says justice has been done. But is death really justice?"

A valid question, not too far off from some of my own thoughts on the topic... but the comments on the question, oh my. Nobody actually answered the question, or tried to. Instead, it turned into a discussion about whether bin Laden has actually been killed. The consensus was that he has not, that he continues to elude everyone's grasp, that this was a stunt for Obama's reelection campaign, that the burial at sea was nothing more than tossing the body into the ocean before anyone has a chance to notice that it isn't actually bin Laden's body, that Americans are a bunch of liars and always have been.

I know, I know, everyone posts ridiculous things on Facebook, we're all exposed to it, we should just block the wackos from our news feed and move on with our lives. But these weren't the wackos. These were the listeners from 10 years ago, now making absurd and cruel statements without any real awareness of what they're talking about.

I guess right now they aren't listeners anymore. They've morphed into talkers. But I'm still here, I'm still listening. I might be their lone American Facebook friend, but I am still there, reading what they have to say and cringing over it. The words aren't falling on a void. At least... not completely.

I'm here. I'm listening. And I don't love everything I'm hearing. But I don't necessarily want to respond to it, either. Sometimes it's easier to just choose not to engage. And therefore... silence.