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.