Reflections On Your First Six Months (Or So)
Hello Little Lion!
Another 90 days (+/-) have passed since we last wrote and we thought it was time to catalog a few observations once more.
You went on your first cross-country trip by commercial jet in April. We decided to invest in a stroller and car seat system that were more travel-friendly and it was definitely worth the money. While we were a bit anxious about getting you and your equipment through security, onto the plane and then back off on each leg of the journey, the thoughtful design of our purchase made that part of the trip relatively stress-free, and believe it or not we got a lot of support and patience from the people in the TSA and the gate agents and flight attendants. You of course managed to fill your diaper several times before, during and after the flight but Papa Lion figured out how to get you changed in the tight quarters fairly quick and by the third time he felt like he was a pro and could do anything!
Our friends and their little daughter were so happy to get to meet you and spend some time with you while you were still little.
You slowly started to lose all your birth-hair over the last few months as it was replaced by new hairs you’ve grown outside the womb. You came into the world with a full head of fairly thick and long hair, and the way it fell out was so funny and left you looking wise beyond your years — you developed a “Philosopher’s crown” of long hair on the side and back of your head with a big bald spot on top. It’s now all replaced, except for a light patch on the back of your head where you pivot around to look while on your back. And also, your extensive original side burns, which remind us of the style of the Orthodox Jewish men.
Your teeth started coming in at four months! You have seven along the top and the bottom right now and you continue drooling and fingering your mouth so we think there are more. You’ve fattened up considerably from when we last checked in. We’re sorry to say we hardly recognize your early baby pictures, because we realize they are a glaring example of our first mistake as parents — not understanding how important it was to get you some extra supplementation with formula feeding. We really agonized over that decision and how to go about it but the encouragement to do so was unanimous from the professionals we consulted with along the way and they were absolutely correct. The tongue-tie you were born with just made it impossible for you to be a purely-breast fed baby.
Your mother, the Wolf, has worked tirelessly since your birth to pump for you so that you still get your primary nutrition from her breast milk, something we know is specially formulated just for you and your needs. We are happy that you shot right past our ignorance with her extra love and care for you and at this point no one would ever suspect you had started out the way you did if we didn’t tell them. You’ve had one minor cold that led to a few days of coughing and runny nose but aside from that you’ve been disease-free, cheerful and growing in weight and strength every day. Whereas last time we checked in you still looked and felt in our hands like something new and fragile, now you have some “heft” and chunkiness that makes you stand out as your own person.
Your mobility development as been amazing for us to watch! You learned to roll over a few months ago and just in the last week you have begun spinning on your stomach. You’re not yet scooting or crawling but that’s where you’re going next. By rolling and pivoting, you can get to a lot of places. We can no longer set you down on the middle of your play area and expect to find you there a few minutes later. And we’re having to get more and more creative at bed time in corraling you on the bed because you like to roll around a lot now as you continue practicing mobility in your sleep. We lay you down one way and come in at our own bed time to find you have rotated a completely different way.
You started sleeping through the night a few months ago, and we were so grateful to get a few weeks of mostly uninterrupted sleep. But you’re still growing and changing, and you’ve “regressed” to wakefulness at night again as you’re sensitive to our movements and your own, which are many. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night, talk to yourself and coo and play for fifteen or twenty minutes and then decide to go back to sleep! It’s really cute, but really challenging for us to get our rest right now. We’re never mad about it, though, we know this is what we should expect and we understand how important it is for you to keep growing and changing and we know we’ll get back to a place where we can all sleep peacefully. Eventually.
One thing we are so satisfied with right now is your incredible focus and self-reliance while playing. Your concentration and ability to emotionally self-sustain have grown over the last ninety days and it is very easy to lay you down on your mat and see forty-five minutes pass before you need an emotional recharge from us. Your toys are simple things — plastic hair rollers, wooden rings, rubber “muffin wrappers”, colorful bandanas, a geometric “wire frame” ball with holes for your fingers. You like test the properties of these toys in endless ways, handling them, chewing them, squeezing them, turning them around and around and looking at them from different angles, combining or swiping them past one another. Your at a stage where simple things that allow you to repeat and refine an operation over and over again are plenty stimulating for you. Every now and then you’ll look for our eyes, to see if we’re near, or to see if we’re watching, but mostly you like to just focus on what you’re doing intently.
Your verbalizations have changed, too. Cooing, quick breathing, incoherent chattering and shrieking. Oh yes, the shrieking! Sometimes you will use all your might to summon your voice and expel
(at this point, several weeks ago, you woke from your nap, I set my laptop down and failed to return to this post and complete it. So I am posting it as is… because you’re now 1.5 months older than when I wrote it and a lot of changes have taken place again!)
