Napping

 I am typing very quietly seated on the floor next to your mattress while you are napping. Your baby toes just twitched.

Your first real word is "moon." You point out the window at it, and you have taken to hunting for it in all of your board books. You also know "hat" and point to your head when you see pictures of hats, and you know "dog" and "bird" and "cloud" and "balloon." You say "out" to get out of the shower, and sometimes "in" to go through a door, and "up" to be picked up. I feel like the dam has started to break. 

You amaze me.

Milestones

 A small Christmas, with just us three and the dog and your uncle and his girlfriend, with grandparents over Zoom, but as befits a Christmas for a little boy who has just turned one, the number of presents for you was dizzying. Jammies you have already outgrown! Stacking things we will give away! A cement mixer truck that you love, an umbrella that you love even more, a stuffed sloth from your uncle which you adore, and best of all - extendable back scratchers that your dad put in the stockings, which you collected and wielded with great alacrity and some alarm on the part of the dog. You were so exhausted from all the excitement that you fell asleep at your nap without even rocking. Then we had a quiet afternoon playing with fake tattoo pens and, eventually, showing you fifteen minutes or so of your very first film - The Thin Man. It's technically a Christmas movie, after all, with plenty of snappy dialogue, and a dog for you to stare at. You are enjoying identifying dogs in your baby books, and your new favorite activity is to hunt through and find all instances of the moon in your books. You have figured out that they represent the moon in the sky, and you find one, sometimes say "Mmmm," and then point out the window.

"Look, that woman is wearing a hat," I said to you about glamorous Maureen Stapleton. You pointed to your head, and I said, "yes! That's right!"

You also have finally started signing! You made the signs for "more" and "milk" for the first time - with me, anyway - on Christmas eve. Last night while we were snuggling and watching Nick Charles mix martinis you nursed, then looked up at me and made the sign for "more." You have also made the sign for "sleep" when it's time for your nap. I feel like Annie Sullivan having a breakthrough with Helen Keller.

You have said "out," or something like it, and you have started waving goodbye when you want whatever is happening to end. When you want to go to bed you wave goodbye to your father with increasing insistence.

Today it is breezy and cold and sunny and after your nap we are going to go outside and play somewhere with your godlessparents Ginger and Brian. 

All in all, it was something like a magical Christmas, even given everything. I think it's because of you.

14 Months

 "Charles," I said to you this morning in the kitchen. "Would you please put your lunchbox in your school bag?"

You accepted your lunchbox, and then toddled over to your school bag and put it in.

Google has been showing me photos from a year ago, and they are of a chubby baby napping in his baby pillow with a stuffed giraffe leaning benevolently over. You have the first of your six chins. And now, a year later, you can walk and know what "lunchbox" and "put" and "school bag" mean, and you get pleased with yourself when you succeed. You are a whole little person.

Sometimes I still can't believe you are really here.

True Mother Confessions

 I miss you, when you go to Montessori.

I look at pictures of you on my phone while you are asleep next to me.

I cannot wait for you to talk.

I am amused by the exchange we had yesterday or the day before, when I said "Can you say 'up'?" And you smiled at me and shook your head. (Even though I know you can, because you said it a few months ago.)

Even now, I could be writing, and getting lots done, but instead, I'm on here, thinking about you.

First Cold

 Oh, my poor baby, what a snot-filled and disappointing Thanksgiving we just endured. All of us wretched, with noses running hither and yon, and canceling your Godlessparents for Thanksgiving and it just being the three of us and Milo, and you were so out of sorts you didn't even want any cranberries or stuffing. For several days you pretty much only nursed, and even that was hard with your stuffed nose. We took as many as four showers a day just for the steam. Today we are still a bit stuffy, but you went back to school, and sobbed when I dropped you off, which you haven't done in weeks. You have been away from school for an entire week, and even though you smiled when you awoke from a car nap to see where you were, I gather it was all too much. You are tired. I am tired. We are tired together. 

In theory your grandparents are coming for Christmas - half of them, anyway. Though if I am honest though I know they miss you and us very much, I am dreading their coming in the midst of a worsening pandemic in which there will literally be nothing whatsoever for us to do except follow the usual routines of the day with you, much of which - bathtime, diapers, snuggling in bed - they can't really be privy to. At some point today I will push through my fatigue and put candles in the windows and a wreath on the door. I will also recriminate myself for not doing more writing even though I am missing you.

These are hard days, Succotash. I've taken to fantasizing about a future normal. I've been looking up pressure walls to make your room in New York. I've been imagining how you will make the transition to your new school. Wondering about when you will start to talk. 

Loving you, and loving you, and loving you.

Falling Leaves

It seems impossible, given the relentlessness with which I document your comings and goings, that I left my phone in the car as we walked up the path to Montessori the day before yesterday on a warm and glistening sunny autumn day. The giant tree in the front lawn was aflame with orange, and when the wind kicked up the leaves drifted down slowly like snow, painting an orange carpet over the grass. You stopped, transfixed, staring at the leaves. You grinned and me and pointed back at the tree. You let go my hand and waded into some leaves, staring with an open-mouthed smile as they drifted down, slowly. 

Instead of watching video of you in this moment I must settle for remembering it, and seeing the expression of pleasure and wonder and excitement on your face as you felt the breeze take you up and take up the leaves and swirl them around and flutter them down to the earth.

When we went back to school today, after yesterday's holiday, the tree was denuded, all the leaves in a thick carpet on the grass, heralding the coming of winter. 

These are transitory pleasures, that we are living. But we are here. And we remember. 

Election Day

 You have jet lag. It was fall back the day after Halloween, and also I'm pretty sure you are teething, and so we've had a couple of bumpy nights. Last night you conked out by 6:30 and this morning you were up and bushy-tailed at 5. You were even done with your first nap in time for us to get to Montessori at 8:45, so you are having a full day at school today. Your first. I hope you are having fun.

It's a brisk and windy day today, as everyone goes to the polls and with any luck American democracy survives. I have moments of excitement but most of today has been a wash. I went to the weird 1920s office space that I share with your godlessparents and I've been reading for work. Brian and Ginger stopped by and Brian opened a bottle of rum at 11:30. If I didn't have to pick you up in the car soon I would have been tempted. There's cannabis chocolate in the fridge too. Nursing, though. I do actually try to be a responsible parent for you. Believe it or not. 

You have gotten in to the Manhattan Montessori that I have been angling to get you into since before you were born, so success on that front. I have already gotten sort of misty in anticipation of how you will feel leaving your current Montessori for life in the city. But that's a year away. No point worrying about it now. For now, let's assume New York City won't be in flames tonight and tomorrow. How about that?

I am glad you are unaware of all these frightening things. You don't seem scared of people in masks, though you usually try to pull mine off. You don't know that we have a frightening and divisive leader. You don't know about racial strife, or economic collapse, or disease. You are a baby, and you are smiley and merry, and experience the world as full of friendly people who love you and want to pick you up. I am grateful for this. I live in fear of your ever discovering it is anything but the truth.

So, today, you are playing now with your friends at Montessori in Massachusetts, and I am trying to work and not doom-scroll, and tonight you and I will go to bed early again, and we will hold each other, and I will marvel that you exist, and you will snuffle and complain until you find my boob in your sleep. I have gotten very involved lately looking at footage of the new giant panda cub at the National Zoo. He's a miracle too. They have a panda cam in the den, and as I watch this giant panda mother and her little round panda cub snuggle and put paws in each others' faces and sit up to nurse and then roll over again I feel like it is a livestream of you and me when we hide together in bed at night, willing the world to be as safe and warm and loving as our secret family den can be. 

Growing

 You are so tall! You are 98th percentile for height, which is amazing. Your smile is infectious, and there is no sound I love more in the world than your happy giggle. You have started to be impatient to get to school, which is nice to see. We go to a playground around the corner and you want to go down the big slide and play in the baby car and on the abandoned tricycles. When we go down the slide you sit on my lap and I count one.... two.... (on two I vibrate my legs like we are revving up our engine) and on THREE! we slide down, and you giggle, and I kiss your sweet baby cheeks.

I love your sweet baby cheeks. 

I usually say "may I smooch you?" before I do it, trying to respect your autonomy. I don't know why I use "kiss" as a noun and "smooch" as a verb, but that's how it shakes out. We give kisses, but we also smooch. 

You are learning words, but can't quite say them yet. You can point to my bellybutton when I ask you where it is, you point at Milo, you point at your toy apple, you point at the shower door. I'm so curious what-all is happening in your baby mind at any given time. 

You have been waking up unusually early - like 4:30, 5 am. And having your morning nap early too. I'm not sure what the deal is, as you seem tired and like you don't want to be awake. I have ordered you some special overnight diapers, on the theory that maybe you are wet and that is bothering you. We shall see. Dare I hope that an overnight diaper will carry you straight from 7 pm to 7 am, and it turns out we aren't taking a morning nap at all? 

You love books, and my old mushroom bell toy, and your grandparents are going to send up my tricycle for you, which I think you will like. My baby is a toddler now. I knew, intellectually, that babyhood didn't last all that long, but it's a different thing entirely to experience how brief it is in real time. 

I love you so much that sometimes I think I can't handle it.

And that is how things stand on this, a couple of weeks after your first birthday.

Birthday!

 This morning, after first nap, as I pulled off your sleeping romper and started to climb out of my own pajamas, I asked the smart speaker to play Sweet Child of Mine for us while we washed. When the guitar riff started and I began to bang my head gently, you grinned and started nodding along. 

Then we drove to school listening to music that makes me think of you, and it was a sunny and crisp autumn day in New England, and when we got to school you were so excited that you insisted on walking up all the steps yourself and then pressed your hands on the glass to be let in and didn't even need a goodbye hug. I will pick you up in three hours and then we will go home, and this afternoon in our garden you will have your first carrot cake cupcake. And your Manamana has gotten you a balloon.

I love you so, sweet Succotash of mine. 

I cannot believe you are really here.

One Year Ago

 Today I was in the hospital, entering my 24th hour of induced labor to have a baby. Today I am draped over a smooshy beanbag chair in a funny little 1920s era office that I have rented together with some friends to have a space to write while my Succotash is in Montessori up the street. After a bumpy beginning my baby now happily walks himself up the steps to the infant and toddler house, and knocks on the glass door to be let in. Today he almost jogged into the classroom to see his babyfriends, not even stopping for an extra hug, and barely registering when I said "bye bye Succotash, I love you. Quack quack quack I'll be right back."

My baby isn't a baby anymore. In the night he rolls over onto his belly and sighs. I am beginning to think he might wean himself of his own accord, after several weeks being worried he would remain a gung ho partisan of nursing until well into first grade. He doesn't reach for me as much in the night as he did before. He rolls enough that we have obtained a toddler mattress and padding for the floor, because I'm worried soon the bed won't be safe for him. Strange days.

Tomorrow we will celebrate with a grandmother and an uncle and a neighbor or two in the garden, with a cupcake each and a balloon for the birthday boy. He won't know why so many people he loves are all in the garden, or what to do with the candle. Here is the robust little fellow, tall, inquisitive, with an unfortunate habit of poking baby friends in the eye when interested in them. He is unlike the seven pound creature who emerged from my body in one very surreal moment early in the morning almost one year ago. And yet, in that creature I can see the outline of the boy who lives with me now.

I feel sort of inadequate to the task of expressing what it means to me, and to my husband, to have him here, for him to be turning one year old tomorrow, for him to be real, and really here, and alive, and with us, and a person who is at the very beginning of what (God willing) will be a long and eventful and meaningful life. I look around at Mustard House now and dare to imagine that he might be in this house with his grandchildren one day, that it will have been in our family for over a hundred years, that my first book will have secured a home for this imaginary family I never dared to dream I would have until, one moment, almost one year ago, it appeared.

Almost One

You and your six chins walked almost happily into Montessori today, and smiled and waved at me when I said my special goodbye ("quack quack quack I'll be right back"), and now I am around the corner trying to work and looking at pictures of you first. 

You are now able to: clap, climb the stairs spotted but unassisted, eat an apple or a pear, crawl around in the bed (uh oh), say "Momo" when you see the dog. You play next to a baby at Montessori and it is charming. Yesterday we had a babyfriend over and you had what I think was your first introvert meltdown. You are obssessed with the construction details on the top of your play teepee, in which we plan soon to place a toddler mattress to turn into a secret bed for you. I will miss sleeping with you, as you are warm and snuggly. I will probably be lax about you sneaking into our bed when you have a bad dream. I am soft. 

I am in the process of applying to 2s programs for you in New York for next year, which seems impossibly far off. We have applied early decision for you to another Montessori that is walking distance from our apartment. I am imagining a world where you and I stroll down in the morning, you play all day while I write nearby, and then we stop in Madison Square Park to play on our way home, or go up to meet your dad for early dinner. I imagine a world with a COVID vaccine and Joe Biden as president, and that your babyhood in quarantine will one day be a matter for family lore and nothing else, and not the new eternity. 

You are better at keeping your sneakers on. You like the baby swings, especially when I stop you at the top of your swing arc to bring you in for a kiss. I love kissing your baby cheeks. I see them and say "May I have a smooch?" and then I shower you with kisses. 

It's warm today, but the leaves are changing colors. Fall in New England. 

I have to plan the world's smallest socially distant first birthday party for you. I think we will serve carrot cupcakes and get you a balloon. 

I can't believe it's almost been a year. I feel like you just got here, and like I have always known you. My Succotash wish.

Crying in the Car

I'm in a spare, nearly empty antique office in downtown Beverly, five minutes away from you while you are enjoying your first day of Montessori. At least, I hope you are enjoying it. You were smiling and looking with curiosity at all the other kids and babies, and when we got to your classroom your favorite teacher Donna was waiting for you, and you reached out to her right away. I wrote down my cell number and kissed your cheek twice and waved bye bye with both hands and I made it all the way to the car before I started to cry.

I know it's good for you. I know it. You need to be with adults who aren't your father or Manamana or me. You need to be with other babies. They have a whole room set up just for you. It's time to start learning to nap not in my arms. But damn, am I a stereotype of a first time mother dropping her baby off at day care. 

I'm going to try to work today, so that I can at least point to a good reason why you are in a classroom with relative strangers instead of at home with me and your father. If everything goes perfectly I am to pick you up at noon, which is in two hours. If you are having a tough time they have promised to notify me. I can be there in five minutes.

Five minutes.

I love you so much it hurts. 

Do you know that? If you ever read this, then you will.

Words

 You are going through a mental leap right now, according to the know-it-all app that I have been using to try to divine what wonders are unfolding in that little baby mind of yours. And though some of the leap has taken physical form - all at once last week you started waving! And you continue to edge closer to walking unassisted - must curious is what I suspect is happening with your language.

You already had "mama" and "dada" and for awhile you've had "baba" (baby, I'm pretty sure) and "dodo" (which I am 90% sure means dog, as it is often said in response to the appearance of Milo). You had "up" but I haven't heard it in awhile, and also "uh oh," same. And I've been trying to do basic sign language with you, mostly "more" and "All done," but also "water" and "milk" and "nap." You mostly seem unimpressed with my attempts, preferring to ask for water by saying "UH UH" and gesturing to the cup with your chin. But then yesterday you and your grandmother and I were eating dinner at the picnic table outside. It was a mild summer night, and the nice part of eating outside is that you can make as much mess as you want and nobody minds. You were eating a simply staggering volume of pasta with cheese sauce, and you had it all over your face, and we were making silly laughing faces at each other and you were pulling me in for a wet sloppy kiss and I said "Oh I love you, yes, I love you I love you," and you said "AH uuvoo" and your grandmother gasped, so it wasn't just me, who heard it.

Then last night your dad and you and I were in the shower playing with shower toys and rinsing off the salt water from playing on the beach with some friends after our picnic in the afternoon. You love the handheld shower sprayer, and are the only baby we know who will reliably wash your own face. You were playing with your sprayer and we were talking about bellybuttons. You have a belly button, and mama has a belly button, and daddy has a belly button, and each time we would point and say "belly button," and then you said "ellehutton," and your dad gasped, and we asked each other "did he really just say that?"

It astonishes me, that we all learn to do these things, and eventually you will think nothing of walking across the room, or saying "bellybutton," and yet in the span of time I have kept this blog you have blinked into existence out of nothing. It's the closest thing to magic I have ever experienced.

Ten Months and Three Days

 Sweet Succotash! Or should I say Nermal. What a busy few days you have had. We celebrated your tenth month with a picnic on Old Burial Hill, in which you discovered picnic spoons and roamed among the headstones in striped overalls and a small bucket hat. At ten months and one day, the very day after your poor granddad returned to Florida, you took three unassisted quick little steps towards a rolling felt ball. You obligingly repeated the performance for your mother and her waiting cell phone, so I thank you for that. You have also begun to wave. You wave goodbye, and smile happily, and you wave hello on occasion. You are breaking through your top two incisors, which is giving you a tough time. One of them is through your gum, and one isn't quite. It's messing with your sleep, but you are handling it gamely. 

Your Manamana is here to help, but we are all realizing that there is more to helping with a nearly walking, practically toddler Succotash than any of us had perhaps anticipated. And so we have found a way for you to start going to a Montessori up in Beverly. I am trepidatious about it, but they have a plan for easing babies into it, and as I start to know your emergent character I come to think that you will really love it. You will have a whole room to roam and investigate and no one trying to keep you out of trouble. I think you will relish the freedom. And you so far have loved other babies. I know it will be good for you. And for us, as we will learn parenting things from their teachers who know babies better than we do, and we will also have time to do our actual jobs. But the first day they send me away is going to be tough. For me, if not for you.

Later this afternoon we will take you swimming in the baby pool, after a morning in which we all frolicked in the sprinkler. We are lucky to be here and not in NYC. No sprinklers or baby pools for us there. 

The world outside continues terrifying, but here at home, we have newly installed baby gates to keep you safe, and we have started to change your diaper on the floor, with you standing up. At moments I catch a glimpse of what your little boy face will look like, but you still have warm and rosy baby cheeks when you wake up in my arms from a nap, and I can still rain kisses on you. At least, for now. Still my baby. Though not for very much longer.

Coping

I cannot deal with these baby gates. They require some sort of mental fortitude to install that I do not, at this precise moment, possess, even though now is the time to put them up, as I have figured out where they should go, and you are occupied with our lovely neighbor who you love, and my in-laws are not arrived yet. And yet I opened one of them, unfolded the instructions, glazed over, panicked slightly, and fled into the kitchen to eat cheese.

I have noticed, incidentally, that you also like to eat cheese when you are out of sorts or upset. Typical.

I am whiplashed by how quickly you have changed in the past week. I fear that the age of playpens was brief and undistinguished. Now you want only to stagger around, holding onto my index fingers, groaning like something out of the zombie apocalypse as you stomp your baby feet after the poor long suffering dog. He's gotten good at staying just out of reach, watchful because that's his job, to watch over us, but without being in too much danger of losing a baby fistful of orange and white fur. The other day you yanked on one of his ears like a bell pull, as if you were a Gilded Age lady impatiently summoning her maid. Your father has obtained a sort of baby sledge for you, which is mean to be pushed around with enough resistance that it should help you walk, but you are mad at it right now. You don't want to push it. You want to learn about its wheels, which means tipping it over, which means it falling on your sweet baby foot, and that was unpleasant for everyone involved. You haven't forgiven the sledge yet for its audacity.

I, too, hold grudges against inanimate objects. It's why I don't want Nana and Grandpa's dining table.

Anyhoo. The baby gates. I haven't installed them. Presumably as the cheese gradually takes hold I will feel better about them in general. They look nice, they're sturdy, they will do what I ask them to do, so all that is good. Perhaps I will be ready for them tomorrow. We shall see.

Nermal

Oh my gosh, SUCCOTASH what am I going to do with you? In three days you have gone from baby to toddler. I didn't entirely understand how quickly that would happen. You now pull up and grasp onto objects and stagger around like a little drunkard and use your hands to cruise around the room. Crawling, you have decided, is for punks and sellouts. You are so excited about walking that you cannot sleep. Last night we spent two hours trying to get you down, and then you awoke what felt like every hour or so just overwrought. Very very Nermal-like (the world's cutest kitten). Right now you are playing at the neighbors and I have to measure doorways and tops of stairs to babyproof the bejeezus out of this house immediately. Good lord.

You also have learned that dropping things from your high chair is a fun game. Our new approach is to return things to you if they fall accidentally, but not if you throw them down and then give us an impish smile. You beast.

You are particularly invested in the footposts on our new bed upstairs. They are the perfect height for you to grasp and touch and inspect. You want to be carried less and stiff-arm me into putting you down, but if I put you down in your playpen your little face crumples and then I pick you up again. Then you stiff-arm me to be put down, because it is the floor that you want. The floor! To the floor, Mama!

I have sort of stopped calling you Succotash to your face, which makes me a little sad, but you have an organic nickname that seems to suit you, and which I catch myself using naturally in a way that Succotash was not. In any case, Succotash was my imaginary baby. And you are you.

You frustrate me when you are obviously tired and refusing to nap because you want to stand on the floor and investigate the bedposts. It's a tough balance, as I have learned that baby naps are important for parents too, not just babies. But in general you are still smiley and charming and the only person I want to see at six in the morning.

Now, to order those baby gates....

Nine Months

You are upstairs playing in our new shower with your father, and I hear you making contented "oohhh wahoow wahooow" sounds all the way down three flights of stairs, so I know that I have a minute to note down your state of affairs on this, your nine month birthday, official moment in which you have been outside my body for longer than you were inside it.

You have two teeth. But you are still a huge partisan of nursing, perhaps even moreso than in your tiny infancy. The other night while reading your favorite book, when we got to the part where the pigs say "LA LA LA," you said "LA LA LA" along with us. You are tall, and you stand by yourself, and I have seen you balance briefly and pass a block from one hand to another before having to hold on again. You will walk, I think, any minute. You have been observed to crawl, but you hate it. You love Milo, and your parents, and Callie, our neighbor who now watches you sometimes while waiting for her big banking job to begin.

You are almost a little boy.

But not quite.

Snoozing

You are, at the moment, asleep on the chest of Callie, our neighbor who is home from finishing her MBA at Duke. She is supposed to be starting a high powered banking job in NYC, but instead she is at her parents' house for the pandemic. She is the eldest of three, who I somewhat tiresomely refer to as "the beautiful and accomplished Naughton girls," and all of them are home. I was surprised when she offered to come babysit for twenty dollars an hour. It will be a great anecdote, I just texted her, for him to tell when she is CFO of Barclay's.

This is the first time since we fled to Marblehead in March that you have napped anywhere other than on my body.

It feels like a huge step. Though I also miss you. So, there's that.

All right. Now I'm going to try to work for the next thirty minutes. We'll see how it goes when you wake up.

Eight Months!

You are eight months old Succotash! The dogwood is blooming in the garden, the peonies are almost up, and you have cut not one, but two tiny little teeth. I can't see them yet but I can feel them with a fingertip, and definitely when you bite down while nursing (ow! we are working on that). On your eight month birthday you also pulled to standing for the first time, on your zany zoo ridiculous activity cube thing that your indulgent mother got for you. Then yesterday, you were standing with one hand on the zany zoo and the other holding a teether. It was a rough afternoon as I think your teeth were hurting you. You wanted your teether in your other hand. You let go the zany zoo, balancing like a little drunkard, passed the teether to your right hand, and grabbed hold of the zoo again with your left without falling over. I was very impressed, and told you so.

"You're working so hard," said your mother, who wishes you to be praised for a flexible mindset in which effort is praised over innate ability.

You have wide, inquisitive brown eyes, and are babbling more in tones that border on the conversational, and are only sometimes peppered with pterodactyl screeches.

You give tight hugs and wet kisses, and I think this week you are working on going from three naps to two. Now if we could just get you to take those naps on your own, without needing to cuddle me.... but the truth is, I love holding you while you sleep. I truly love it. Some day you will drop my hand because it is embarrassing to hold hands with your mother in public. So for now, I hold you while you sleep, and point out flowers to you as they bloom, and we celebrated your eight month birthday by going up the street to Gas House Beach so you could feel the sand on your bare baby feet for the very first time. We rinsed them off in the still-cold ocean, and you didn't make a peep, but just took it all in with your wide and watchful brown eyes.

World on Fire

Well, dear Succotash, I never thought I would say "I'm glad the looters didn't hit our apartment building," but you have been born into extraordinary times. At the moment cities around the country have been convulsed in rage and protest over the death of a man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police. That means that we are at present in the midst of a global pandemic, a global economic collapse, and a moment raising real questions about the tenuous future of American democracy. Not, in short, the world I would have wished for you. I honestly wonder what's going to happen next.

Your godless mother Ginger was protesting last night, and hightailed it away before the police took people out with billy clubs in Boston. She's tired and shaken and also thinks she shouldn't come sit in our garden until she has quarantined for another two weeks. In another time in our life, your father and I would have been with her. We are not. When I got her text I was in bed with you snoozing next to me. I then stayed awake and hypervigilant until 1 am for no reason. "Why weren't you at Selma" was a question for the 1960s. Why weren't you barricading the Brooklyn Bridge, mama and daddy? Because of you, my nonimaginary baby. I would like to have thought I was the sort of mother who would take her baby to protests. But it turns out I am the sort of woman to hightail it out of town and hide as long as it keeps her baby safe. And I'm not even all that sorry.

Maybe a little.

I love that you are wholly unaware of any of this. You smile at me in the morning the moment you wake up, a happy and safe baby who seems to be cutting his first tooth and taking it all in stride. I know your gender and your class status and your race confer privileges upon you that are substantial, and unfair, and unearned, and it will be my job to teach you humility, and empathy, and responsibility, and a sense of fairness and equanimity and justice. I know I must do that soon, immediately, or that I should have done it already. I know that the constant low-grade fear or awareness that I feel every moment for your safety would be magnified a hundredfold if you were black, or poor, or sick, and that my fear for you would make my soul constantly hurt.

Here's my hope. A lot of people of my generation naively believed that the 1960s maybe didn't sort all this stuff out, but at least got us started in the right direction. We bought into the Sesame Street ideal of celebrations of difference in which we all get be friends now. I still want that to be true. I want you to have a childhood in which race and class politics in the United States have undergone meaningful positive change. I want the world to be a more just place, within the next decade, because of a lot of brave young people taking to the streets right now.

And I want the republic to survive. If it can.

Quiet Day

Each day wears into the next, and it can sometimes feel like no time is going by, until I try to put you into the 12 month leggings and your chubby ankles stick out. I am wondering how to help you learn how to sleep alone. It's puzzling. Yesterday your father and I discussed the fact that it's possible that there is no optimal thing. That is, you had a fussy nap, and I tried putting you in your bassinet, and made it ten minutes before picking you up, and eventually you feel asleep on me as usual, and I felt certain that whatever I had done was the wrong thing, or the suboptimal thing, viz a viz helping you learn to sleep alone, or get good sleep, or whatever it is I am supposed to be doing to support your development. And it would be nice if you could nap alone, as then I could do my job, for which I will then be paid, in theory. But that means it would be more convenient *for me,* if you would sleep alone. But is it optimal for you? Maybe you, as an individual person who is also only seven months and a bit old, are at a point where, from an emotional and developmental standpoint, the optimal thing is to nap at my breast, feeling warm and safe and held and like you know exactly where I am if you need me.

I am, at this juncture, attempting to put what is optimal for you ahead of what might be optimal for me. I think that's my job. Not in a martyr sort of way, only that I've had a lot of time to be the optimal driving force in my life, and you are only a baby for a short time, and babies really can't help themselves very much. And anyway. Someday, probably sooner than I realize, you will find it embarrassing to be hugged by me. Maybe I should worry less about this, and just enjoy it.

Seven Months

You are sitting behind me, playing with wooden toys, happy as a clam after making a high pitched sonic screech all during dinner because, it turns out, you don't like carrots.

I endeavored to both encourage you to say "Mama up" if you wanted to be let out of your high chair instead of "EEEEEEEEE," and then I explained to you that if you kept up this high pitched whine approach I was going to drop you off at the abattoir. Then I enjoyed narrating your various letters home from the abattoir. "Dear Mama," you wrote. "Please don't think me ungrateful, but the abattoir is not nearly as nice as everyone says."

At seven months you are chubby! You have leg rolls, and a double chin, and you are very winning. Clothing sized for 12 month old babies is snug on you. Your hair has grown in, and your eyebrows are very expressive. You are very focused on standing up, but not able to get yourself there yet, even if you are just able to totter while holding on to your Zany Zoo. You are still on three naps a day, and each nap these days takes place in my arms. At times you conk out on my shoulder and I try, ever so softly, ever so delicately, to lower you into a pack and play in our room. The moment your back touches the surface of the pack n play your precious eyes fly open, and your mouth opens, and your objection begins to wind up. Presumably this won't always be the case, but you don't like be apart from us (me, really) when you sleep.

It's okay. I will miss it, when it ends. Whenever that may be.

You are enjoying more food, and only want to drink water from a real glass. You have no use for sippy cups, and you are over bottles it seems. In truth, you are fascinating to watch. My parents lately sent up my 1978 plastic Fisher Price whinnie horse, and you just about lost your mind with excitement, even though you can't walk or climb onto it unassisted.

Your obsession with Milo continues unabated.

I am starting to see outlines of what you will look like when you are a boy, and no longer a baby. Sometimes, when you are asleep on me (as you are for thirteen hours out of any given 24), I will thumb through pictures of when you were brand new, astonished at how long it has been since you arrived, and also at how lately you got here.

It's amusing to me that you know your name, and you know the dog's name, but not your father's name, or mine.

Today you are wearing a striped romper with a collar, which is your first collared shirt. You look very serious paging through a book about babies, and something about the collared shirt and the short sleeves makes you look older, which is a weird thing to say about a romper with snaps in the crotch and stripes and an applique of a seal playing with a big round ball.

Your mother, Succotash, is rife with nostalgia.

Mama!

Hello, my dearest decidedly non-imaginary baby, who powered through a rough last three days of Leap 5 and burst out the other side reliably sitting up without toppling over, kicking his little baby feet in his sleep, sporting a round Buddha tummy, and also - most heartwarming for me - saying "Mama." For real.

It continues unseasonably cold and rainy. I think since we fled home there have only been two days without a small craft advisory in the weather, which is neither here nor there when landbound, but I still pay attention to it. We have gotten foam baby flooring, and turned the living room into a play spot for you which you seem to enjoy. Bright colored foam blocks are both nice for teething upon and also your mother finds them relaxing to play with while hanging out with you on the floor.

I have little else to report, beyond continuing to try to expose you to other people via video chats, and there is a constant stream of laundry, and some day I really hope the painting will be done so we can begin to put the house in order. You want to stand up SO BAD. You were very angry at me today when I wouldn't let you put a used Kleenex in your mouth. It's the first time I heard a "mama!" that involved objection, if by strong implication rather than context. You have started to try to stand up in your high chair. But after several weeks of progress you have retreated from wanting to eat solids in the morning. You love nursing, but you get hungry. Like me, you often wait too long to eat, and then don't know why your stomach hurts and you are grumpy.

Your obsession with the dog continues unabated, and the dog himself has gradually begun to unbend in his attitude towards you, which I find charming. He has been observed licking you hello.

You are so big that my arms are always tired, and your dad grunts with effort picking you up.

I am supposed to be working on my book today but, as usual, I am preoccupied with you.

And that is where things stand on this, our sixth (eighth?) week of quarantine.

Oh hey!

You rolled over! From your back to your tummy! Or so your dad reports, I wasn't there to see it. But I'm told you were on the floor of the bathroom and you wanted a toy car.

Look at you, hitting milestones. Well done, baby.

Babble Fish

A couple of times now you have made a noise that sounds something like "mmaammooo" while looking up at me, but it was generally in the context of other babblings, and so I haven't taken it all that seriously. And twice now you have said "Up" to me upon waking up in the morning, and though I tried to reinforce it by saying "do you want up? Up?" before picking you up, or responding to your apparent desire to be lifted, it hasn't quite recurred in a way that is unambiguous.

But last night, as you and I were sitting together on the bed, your father emerged from the bathroom. You saw him, grinned, and then - with no other babble - said "Da'!"

"Did you hear that?" your dad exclaimed.

I did hear it.

Then, this morning, you and I were up early. I am in the habit of giving you kitchen implements to play with in your high chair while I make coffee and unload the dishwasher - your favorite is a whisk paired with a plastic Tupperware for mouthing and beating. When these items fall to the floor, as they often do, I say "uh oh!" for your benefit and return them to the tray of your high chair.

Today, you were hanging out in your playpen, playing with a small rattle. You shook it downward, hard, looked at me, and said "uh oh!" Then you shook the rattle again, and said it again.

I tried to get you to repeat it for a video, but you were too shy.

I realize this is all confirmation bias, but even so - the idea that you will one day speak is mind-boggling to me. We've lived with a dog for sixteen years and are accustomed to reading his needs and opinions independent of language. It's what we have been doing with you, too. But, soon......

Lullaby

Every night I sing you to sleep with this. I don't remember when it started. But it's been several months now.

To the tune of "The Way You Look Tonight."

Some day, when I'm awfully low
and the world is cold
I will feel a glow
just thinking of you
and the way you are, right now.

You're my baby
and I love you so
I love to watch you grow
it's wonderful to know
that you're my baby
just the way you are, right now.

You're so tired
because the day was long.
It's time to go to sleep
that's why I sing this song for you,
my baby.
Just the way you are, tonight.

You're my succotash
my special little boy.
You bring me so much joy.
I waited for you so long,
and you're here, now.
Sleeping in my arms, tonight.

Yes, I love you
and your baby ways.
I love your baby smile,
all your baby days, yes
I just love you.
Just the way you are, right now.

Six Months

Two days late, I post a six month half birthday recollection for you, my Succotash. At six months you are smiley and giggly. You are sitting up almost completely on your own without mishap, successfully roll from tummy to back, and are dangerously close to back to tummy. You wear size 12 to 18 month clothes (yipes), and because we are both under quarantine and also cheap your Dad bought many of the same ones from our favorite soft footie pajama source, all on sale because they are Halloween and Christmas themed. You spend most of your days patterned in bats.

You are obsessed with the dog, who is patient with you. One day on the couch you had your hands sunk in his fur and were holding on so tight that he pulled you over onto your face. It was delightful. On your first avocado - my 43rd birthday, as it happens - you offered your gooey hands to Milo, who gave them a tentative lick.

You have so far eaten banana, avocado, sweet potato, spinach, and oatmeal. All went well save spinach. Today you watched me make tofu for you to eat later this afternoon. You are in a velcro baby phase, where you must be on me or next to me to sleep. I can't tell if it's developmental, or situational given all the disruption of this whole "global pandemic" thing. I feel like it's a problem, until I point out to myself that having you sleep with us actually means we are all getting plenty of sleep. So maybe it's only a problem if I have this narrative in my head about how babies are supposed to sleep? The literature says you must sleep on your back, alone, in a bare crib, in your own room, in complete darkness, and that I just force you to do this even if you cry all night. None of that sounds right to me, does it sound right to you? *I* don't sleep that way, and I am not wholly dependent on another human being for my food and comfort, as you are, and moreover, as you are increasingly aware you are. So. You sleep with us. You are warm and snuggly. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is you smiling up at me.

Yesterday you attended your first Passover seder, which we held via Zoom camped out on the floor of the guest room in Mustard House (shortly to become the upstairs den). It featured Ruth from across the street (nearest) and the Coles and Adam and Heather and Cameron in California (farthest) and Michelle in Canada (international) and friends from New York and Massachusetts and Manamana and Manamapa in Florida and Granpa George and Nana Kath in Houston, hopelessly unable to get their audio to work. You were too little to do the four questions, but the Vermilliotts and Coles and Chocolatedessert kids did them all together, and I love how the Chocolatedessert kids call you "Baby Charles," with baby as a kind of honorific. Sometimes they read to you over Zoom these days.

Right now I'm supposed to be submitting a book chapter, but I am listening to the whirr of buzzsaws upstairs as carpenters work hard on our room and your nursery behind thick sheets of quarantine plastic, and you and your father banging on the piano in the living room.

And that is where things stand on this, the halfway point of your life as a baby.

Fear

I would say my anxiety is getting worse rather than better, but then, so is the pandemic, so maybe it's justifiable. I cannot stand the idea of being sick and having to be separated from you. Just thinking about it in the shower just now, with me healthy and you healthy and your dad healthy and even the elderly dog in better shape than he's been in years, and you downstairs merrily playing with a whisk while your father baked bread, was enough to have me fighting tears under my head full of shampoo.

I love you so much that sometimes I feel like I cannot handle how it makes me feel.

I hope that your only impression of this time is that your babyhood was spent with both of your parents always close by, and that makes you feel safe and secure and loved and able to be fearless in the world because you know you have your home base rock solid.

I hope.

I hope.

Comedown

For the past couple of days I have been moody. I think it's because the initial rush of flight has worn off and I have started to resent that the second half of my son's babyhood will pass during a global pandemic. I realize that very statement is indicative of a lack of perspective, and that we are hugely lucky to be healthy, financially secure, and able to flee New York City until the significant danger has passed.

I'm sure there was some mother whose initial response to Kristallnacht was "Dammit, I JUST got the baby on his sleep schedule, and NOW THIS HAPPENS." But that's kind of where I'm at right now.

The good news is, Succotash is great. He is healthy, he is sleeping (okay, with me, all night, which wasn't the plan, but I've decided it is better for us all to be rested and for him to feel totally safe and secure, and best laid plans be damned, and he will learn how to sleep in his own room and bed when he, some day, actually has his own room and bed). He has both is parents to play with all day long, and his elderly, beleaguered but patient dog, on whom we spent some of this morning raining kisses and then we came away with a fistful of apricot-colored fur and the dog didn't even complain.

But it's not what I want for him. I want the baby to be out making friends, going to museums, having experiences. Not moving between three rooms with an occasional walk around the block, weather permitting. I don't want to have to scheme about when and if we will be able to get fresh veggies and fruit as he starts to eat solids. I am angry on his behalf that this is happening.

43

I am supposed to be working right now, while you are downstairs in the kitchen with your father. But I am stealing a moment to update your baby blog. Today I am 43 years old. I would never have predicted, when turning a nervous and pregnant 42 this day last year, that I would celebrate this birthday in self-imposed quarantine for a worldwide viral pandemic. But I could have predicted, if all went well, that I might celebrate this day by watching you eat your very first pureed avocado.

You are getting bigger, and still smiley, and we have thrown sleep training on the window on "pandemic rules," which means that all three of us are sleeping better, since you and I get to snuggle all night. Your smile is the first thing I see when I open my eyes every morning. I could not ask for a better gift.

I really must do some writing for work, while you are occupied downstairs watching your father mash avocado. In a minute he will summon me to come downstairs too. I can admit to missing having long unstructured blocks of time in which to think my own thoughts, but I also know that that time will gradually return as you become more and more autonomous. I also remind myself that you are only a baby for a very short time, all told. In two weeks you will be six months old. Half a year, in other words. Halfway to being a toddler. Now is the time of your babyhood. Right now. Today. When you are still small enough to carry and to nestle into the crook of my arm and to need nothing else but that to fall asleep.

Eating in Exile

Today I strapped you into the K'tan and we went roaming in Marblehead. I showed you some of the secret pathways in town, and we had a long, albeit one-sided, discussion of the pleasures of secret pathways and exploring and we saw crocuses and spring is coming, even if we cannot go near any of the neighbors we should happen to meet.

Then, this afternoon, you ate a puree of banana and breast milk and a little nutmeg. You sort of buried your face in the spoon and now, because I am me, I am worried you aspirated some banana. You recoiled in horror and then immediately went for more, which was fascinating. Not long after you were finished you flipped out crying, and we don't know why, but we hoovered out your little baby nose and nursed a minute or two and then you were fine.

I'm rather sorry the second half of your babyhood is taking place under such bizarre circumstances. Not least because you will get to meet and enjoy so many fewer people than otherwise. I hope it will not make you shy of strangers when the constraints are finally relaxed. Whenever that may be.

But for today, right now, you have banana breath for the very first time. A banner day for my Succotash.

Decameron

Well, Succotash. Where to begin?

First I will say that usually, when your father is paranoid, I tease him relentlessly and it winds up not being a big deal. But here we are, barely a week since I last wrote to you, and we are holed up in our house in Massachusetts with you and our dog, hiding out with two weeks' worth of groceries during a worldwide pandemic of coronavirus. At the moment, my reason is rebelling that this is really happening, and that we could have fled NYC ahead of a city-wide quarantine (which has not yet been called, but which probably will be, as there is one in place for the Bay Area). I have no adjusted to the fact that millions of people could die as a result of this, and certainly I have not processed the knowledge of the coming global recession (depression?) that will result.

What I have processed is how big you are getting, and how smiley. You have now at long last seen the Atlantic Ocean. You have sniffed the batter of my first ever mediocre attempt at pumpkin bread. You have finally outgrown your baby stroller and are now riding around in a big boy stroller. You are sitting up by yourself for moments here and there. You are desperate to try our food, and as your second high chair arrived today (your first having been abandoned in NYC as your father seized the last Jeep available at the rental place to get us out of town last Friday), we will probably give you some of your own in the next week or two. You think you are on a grand adventure, and are a bit perturbed that we are asking you to sleep in a pack n play in our bedroom in Mustard House. To be fair, you don't know that we have lived here for thirteen years. You can be forgiven for thinking that your whole life would unfold in the den in New York, since that is where most of it has been spent up to this point.

The Decameron is a classic text, by Boccacio, that your father and I read in college. It is about a group of young people who flee the Black Death into the Italian countryside, and pass the time in a country house by telling each other ribald stories, most of which derive their ribaldry from the idea that members of the clergy might be sexual beings. As I write this, all of Italy is in quarantine. Honestly, the only saving grace is that the disease is widely considered not serious in children and infants. It is deadly to people over the age of 70. One of the more tasteless nicknames for this event is the "boomer remover."

Anyway. We shall see. You are living through the first global pandemic since Spanish flu in 1918. It's something.

5 Months

Sweet Succotash, you are in the worst mood ever today. But it's not your fault. We got home last night from your first trip to Texas, during which you endured not only an hour's time difference, but also daylight savings time, and so I think today you are having jet lag. You are fussy and out of sorts and squealy and hard to please. But we love you.

We learned that you dislike car rides and love loud restaurants. You fell asleep on my cousin and that night smelled of her perfume. Your dog was delirious with joy when we returned with seven (seven!) suitcases and an air of defeat. You received books and a stuffed armadillo and several vintage 1970s toys that once belonged to your mother, and you are giggly and smiley and give hugs around the neck and wet, drooly open mouthed kisses. As I write this, feeling down on myself about a book project on which I am behind, you are lying on your whale blanket on the floor wiggling your arms in anticipation of going on a walk with your Manamana and your dad and your Milo dog.

On Friday we have rented a car because your parents are irrationally worried about the coronavirus pandemic and we are driving to Massachusetts to hide out. On the way up we will stop over in Newport to meet your new friend Peter, who was born I think exactly fourteen weeks after you. I don't know when we will come back. I feel like, two weeks. Your dad is saying next fall. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

I am not going on the walk, because I need a few minutes of quiet. But I know that the second you are out of the door in your pram - which you have very nearly outgrown - I will miss you.

And that is how things stand, two days after your five month birthday.

20 weeks

Oh sweet Succotash, your mama is tired today. It's not your fault, or at least not entirely. The batteries on the blackout shades died (speak to your father, please, for details about why one needs to have battery-powered blackout shades), and so this morning you awoke ready for tambourine practice right at dawn, or rather, an hour and change earlier than usual. It meant you were more than ready for your post-second breakfast boob nap, which lasted a comfortable hour and a half on the sofa, during which your mother read the newspaper on her phone and did not sleep. So here I am, at the library, trying to work in the three hour block I have carved out, and instead I am alternately staring into space and writing to you on your secret baby blog.

On Tuesday, Mardi Gras, you turned 20 weeks old. At 20 weeks you have become very interested in toys. You like sitting in your new high chair, which props you sufficiently enough that you might as well be sitting up all by yourself, and your hands bat with ever-increasing intent and specificity at the bead tabletop toy my friend Laurie gave you. You are now able to push the beads up and down and over, and they make pleasant clacking sounds, and then you want to put them in your mouth badly enough that you sometimes get frustrated and require a hug. You also enjoy this weeble-wobble green and white ball thing that my parents gave you for Christmas, which has nice nubbies on it for gnawing. The volume of drool you are producing is nothing short of immense. I have had to emergency order two packets of drool bibs from Amazon, and you can go through one in ten minutes. I will change your bib when I change your diaper, cheerily saying "Bib! New bib!" when I fasten it around your neck, and you grin up at me and wiggle in glee.

You have the best most charming and wonderful toothless grin I have ever seen, and lately since I've been taking you into bed for snuggles and breakfast in the predawn darkness and a little more dozing for me, I get to see your toothless grin first thing when I open my eyes to begin the day in earnest. I am addicted to your grin, I think. I am thinking about it now, and how eager I am to see you again, which I will in two short hours, when my work time comes to an end.

And that is how things stand in this, your 20th week of life.

Update

Hello, non-imaginary baby, drooler of drools, my four month old mystifier. I'm in the library. I'm trying to work. Last night in the interest of sleep I caved to what I suspect is your only wish, and that was to have an all-night sleep and nursefest in bed with me and your dad. It's like being perfectly warm and cuddled while, I imagine, having a tiny drip of Nutella available at all times. You slept, some kicky baby feet notwithstanding, and I slept too, until the act of holding myself in a rigid C shape to keep you safe woke me with soreness thrumming through my hips.

You are smiley, and giggly, and curious, and you have started putting everything in your mouth. I bought two whole packets of absorbent drool bibs so that you don't soak yourself. You can go through one in about ten minutes, which I find impressive. At the moment your father is wheeling you around the city, and I will meet you both in the park behind the library in an hour.

I miss you when we are apart, even after a night of being in constant physical contact with you for eight hours.

Millenia

Hello Succotash, who sleeps in his Snoo in the bedroom while I inhale takeout from the good Chinese place that your father doesn't like.

Your father and I met twenty one years ago yesterday. That means that, as of today, he and I have now known each other longer than we have not known each other, in our entire lives. How wild is that?

Wilder still? We have only known you for four months and change. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is no time at all. We've known the dog for fifteen years. Fifteen! You're just a Johnny-come-lately.

And yet, I also feel like I have known you for my entire life.

I miss you when you are asleep in the other room.

Is it a kind of narcissism, the obsession most parents seem to have for their babies? Maybe. But instead of pathologizing it, I prefer to give myself to it completely. You are asleep in my bedroom. I have known you for mere minutes, relative to how long I have known your father, or your dog, or myself. But I miss you.

Four Months

Today we loaded you into your K'tan carrier and took you on your very first subway ride. We took the express up to Demolition Depot looking for old French doors to use to build your bedroom wall.

You fell asleep for a bit on my chest, with my hand propping up your soft sleeping cheek. Looked at light fixtures for the house you don't know you also live in. Then took the train home and decided to stop in at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central, where we had fresh, grilled, and fried oysters and you stared in wonder at your dad's martini and spent much of the meal contemplating a spoon. Your first, if I'm not mistaken.

Right now you are asleep in the bedroom, with slightly cold ears so I have turned up the heat. For some reason today was one of the first days where it felt normal, that you are here. That you are part of our everyday life.

And that is how things stand on this, your four month birthday.

Also

I'm pretty sure that this morning you waved at me. On my chest in the early light, mid-burp, you looked into my face and grinned, and I grinned, and I waved at you with my right hand and said "Hello Succotash," and you grinned bigger and waved your right fist up and down once, twice, three times.

Hello, Mama.

My Succotash.

Anniversary

One year ago today, at around 11 am, Dr. Beth called me from her car to let me know that of the two fertilized eggs we had made, one of them had stopped growing. Leaving the other, which on day 3 was only five cells big, and was grade B/C quality as far as its fragmentation goes. Dr. Beth wasn't sure it would be worth transferring, and suggested I could let it go until day 5, and if it made it that far, we could freeze it and do genetic testing which would then - maybe - tell us why none of my IVF cycles ever worked.

"You know what," I said. "I'd rather transfer it."

Up to me, said Dr. Beth. And later that afternoon, transfer it we did. I asked to be sedated while it happened, so that everything would be as smooth and comfortable as possible. A friend walked me home, which was literally around the corner. I believe I spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, though I don't remember. This blog would probably tell me.

Today, as I think about this, and the advice I was given, and think about Succotash napping in my arms this morning, grumpy because he wants to sit up on his own but hasn't quite gotten it together yet, but almost, I find that if I dwell too closely on how narrowly we missed being robbed of Succotash at all, and how I cannot imagine how that could be so, and cannot accept it, then I will start to cry in this library carrel where I am supposed to be doing work.

Discovery

I have less clandestine time to write about you while you sleep, as you are sleeping less during the day. You are more curious and interested in the world around you, wanting to play, desperate to explore. Your dad said you crawled today, but you didn't really - more sort of wriggle-wormed an inch or two.

But one discovery you most certainly made yesterday: while in the shower with your dad before bed, you discovered the toes on your right foot. Grabbed them, toyed with them, bent them around. Today when I got you dressed I didn't use footies, so you could be barefoot and spend some time thinking about your toes, if you are so inclined.

Your friend Peter was born on Tuesday, his due date, exactly 16 weeks after you. I have been fielding questions from his mother about sleep, and diapering, and all these things that I now know about. It's weird, that I now know these things. The most recent picture of Peter showed him in a terrycloth dinosaur onesie which you wore a time or two, which was a hand me down from Burl. I like the secret underground economy among mothers. The abhorrence of waste. Peter is sleeping in your co-sleeper too. One baby after another, arriving in a poof on earth, with mothers whispering secret knowledge to each other to ease your way.

Tired

I'm sorry for missing a few days, Succotash, but I am pretty tired. You, being a precocious sort, have entered your four month sleep regression a couple of weeks early. Combine that with Mama's rearing anxiety over Manamana's return to Florida on Wednesday, making Mama an insomniac for the past three or four days, mean that Mama is a zombie. But I still love you.

You are smiley and have already blown past the 9 month size onesies I bought for you last week. I love feeling your body relax against mine when I take you from someone and you are crying. There are some times when I can't soothe you, but it's very rare.

When you are asleep, I miss you and look at pictures of you on my phone.

Recently you have seemed to be growing so big and so fast that I paged through photos the doula took of you being born, and reflected on how tiny and new you were, and how amazed I was that you were there, at last, after all those years of waiting to meet you. And now, getting to know your personality so far - good natured, watchful and quiet at parties and gatherings, affectionate, easygoing with the dog, less easy going with new people than you were, curious, fascinated with light and movement and books. A real person.

Tomorrow you are 16 weeks old.

100 Days

In some cultures - none of which we belong to, and cooptation being generally frowned upon, but we nevertheless feel compelled to take note - the first 100 days marks an important milestone in a baby's life. At this moment the baby is named, or thrown a party. It is partly because this is the moment when a baby isn't a fragile newborn anymore, and you are robust enough now that I can see that. You have stolid little legs, muscles in your shoulders, you are looking around at the world, you are waving your arms. I can see you being curious. Your legs kick when you are agitated or excited or happy to be awake. You are coming into your personhood.

I must have sensed it, too, because I had trouble sleeping last night, and found myself awake at one in the morning, thumbing through pictures of you and me in the first minutes and days that you were born. What's amazing is that you are yourself, clearly - your face is your face, your yawns, your expressions - but you are still so nascent. Tiny, slim little legs, hands swallowed by newborn-sized shirt sleeves. So small that when I first tried to nurse you, in the hospital, I feared my nipple was too big for your mouth.

So here we are, your first hundred days. We spent today at home as we usually do, reading books with Manamana, napping on my lap on the sofa, riding around the house on Daddy's chest. You watched Daddy vacuum dog hair off the blue carpet, and then I put you in a sweater knitted by our next door neighbor and heaped you with baby blankets and we went to your first music class. You stared in wonder at all the toddlers, many of whom smiled and clapped and cooed at you, because babies love other babies, especially little ones like you. You didn't cry, which amazed me. Just took it all in, watching, wide eyed, and by the end waving your arms a bit, seeming to get into the spirit of things. This getting into the spirit of things is your main purpose, and I am loving watching it unfold.

And loving watching you.

Back To Work

I'm at the New York Public Library, and you are home with your Manamana and Daddy, and I know you are fine.

There is milk in the fridge.

You were napping when I left.

You are fine.

I, however, am not fine. My job is stupid and I'd rather be home napping with you.

So there.

Hoo Boy

Look, Succotash. I get it.

The world is interesting. And for someone who has literally never seen any of it ever before, it must be doubly so. Maybe more than doubly! It's possible I cannot appreciate your interest in your surroundings because I have not experienced that degree of wonder and bafflement and existential glee and despair since I myself was three months old.

But! Here's the thing about the world.

It will be there.

You do not need to resist sleep to absorb more of it. You can sleep. You can nap in the morning, and nap in the afternoon, and you can go to bed at night. After each instance, you will wake up. When you wake up, you will find us here, waiting for you, in the world. There will be sunlight and air, carpets and dog fur, blankets and footies. fresh diapers and foul ones, warm mothers and strong dads, Ella Fitzgerald, stuffed giraffes, and a silver rattle, all exactly where you left them (more or less).

It's okay. I understand why you are worried. I know that this is a moment in which you are learning that things fit together, that things progress and change, that days dawn and drag on and set and then night comes. It's all overwhelming. It can feel like you have to manage all of these changes all at once, take them in, understand them, even oversee them - but you don't. Not right now. Right now you are very tired, its a Sunday afternoon and you are in a fresh diaper and romper and you have your pacifier and your light blanket and you are nestled safe in your baby pouf, and as I watch your eyelids gradually lower, then fly open, then drift lower, then fly open again, then drift down until they are open only the merest slit but I can tell that you are looking at me through that slit, making sure I'm still here, I haven't gone anywhere, I wish I could tell you in a way that you would understand that you don't have to worry. You don't have to cry.

You can trust me.

I'll be here.

Solo

You are asleep in the next room. It's 8 pm, and you started to get very sleepy around 6, after a sink bath wherein I learned that you love having a bath before bed, but your legs are too long for the sink bath insert anymore, and so your chubby feet were sticking up awkwardly at one end while you looked wide-eyed out the window at the Chrysler building. At 6:15 you were up again, wanting just one more ounce of milk. Then down. Then another ounce at 7. And now down, maybe for the count.

Your father is at a conference in Las Vegas. He had suggested us going with him, and I did consider it, but I wasn't sure how ready I would be to travel with you at three months of age, and now that we are just about established with your sleep routine I'm just as glad we didn't risk it. Also, they still let people smoke in casinos, and there is nowhere to go but casinos. My irrational SIDS fear would have burst back to life with a fierce vengeance. Where's the fun in that?

The challenge is, with both your dad and soon your grandmother out of town, how to let out the dog for his walk before bedtime. I had somehow failed to take this into account until today. With any luck, tonight the neighbor teenager is going to come downstairs and sit on our couch for ten minutes while I take him out to pee. I hope that you just stay asleep. Please, just stay asleep. Ten minutes. Out, pee, back up. Then I will fall asleep next to you, and try very hard not to be overly responsive to your goblin noises when you are dreaming.

Tomorrow we will spend the day puttering at home, which I imagine will involve nursing and napping and floor time and bed, and maybe the teenager will come back, or maybe a friend of a friend who has offered to stop by will stop by. Tuesday we have a play date at the Met with another babyfriend, and in theory a friend is coming over at night to watch you while I let out the dog. This is a very noisy and talkative friend, however, so I'm beginning to have second thoughts. I don't know. We shall see. So far, our time alone just the two of us feels good.

I tiptoe in to pump and watch you sleeping. You are a couple of inches away from outgrowing your bassinet. Your dad is in denial, I think, about how soon you will need a crib. I think it's soon. A month. Call it a month.

My tiny baby growing bigger, who looked at me the other day and gave me a gummy smile with your fists drawn up under you chin in delight, a movement that I did, and still do today. My son. My little baby soon.

Tuesday, it's 13 weeks.