Life with baby is about to get easier

Originally published Feb. 3, 2017, in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y.

Everyone says it gets easier at three months. That’s the magic milestone for babies.

Suddenly there’s reason to cry. Suddenly there’s laughter and noises that sound more like developing thoughts than spontaneous yips. Suddenly she’s looking straight into your eyes and cracking a funny grin, melting you while you forget anything was ever difficult.

“A big spurt is happening in your baby’s brain development that coincides with significant behavioral changes,” says a babycenter.com article about the three-month milestone. “Your baby is more attuned to the outside world and more sensitive to changes in his environment.”

Genevieve turns three months old Saturday.

Starting at the second week, she wouldn’t stop crying. Her face would be red for an hour, tears streaming down her face and saliva dripping onto our clothes. We’d shut our eyes and recite what everyone else had been telling us: “It gets easier.”

It wouldn’t work. So we’d do what many young parents have done: call the pediatrician.

The pediatrician would tell us it’s normal. Maybe she has colic. Either way, at the three-month mark all will get easier. You’ll forget it was ever like this!

We’d want to scream.

Now it’s three months. Genevieve isn’t crying all the time. She’s relatively calm, sometimes giggling and smirking lovingly … not at us, but at patterns, lines and angles. She adores the frame holding the mirror above our living room couch. Can’t stop gazing at that thing.

Genevieve loves being outside among people, and loud, constant noise comforts her to sleep. She dozes off in her car seat as much as in her crib. She’s beginning to understand her arm and leg muscles. She holds up her head surprisingly well for a three-month-old. And when she’s awake, she’s frighteningly alert. Her big blue eyes dart around the room like ping-pong balls.

We’re starting to get in a rhythm, and a schedule is beginning to form through all this shower-every-two-days-and-eat-mostly-quick-meals muck. Maybe we’re hitting that milestone. Maybe it’s getting easier after all.

But I don’t want to lose it.

My favorite thing in these first three months has been sitting on the living room couch, putting my feet on the coffee table, and setting Genevieve on her back against my inclined legs. While she rests there, alert as ever, I pedal her legs, play with her hands, and sing to her. Sometimes I’ll have a record playing while singing along, other times I’m a capella.

Last week, while singing Wings’ “Listen to What the Man Said” to Genevieve in her resting position, her eyes were darting. For a second she looked at me, but more often she was fixed on the mirror frame she loves so much. Anyway, I hit this note, and she smiled. A few seconds later, I returned to that note. She smiled again. So I veered off course and went back to the note, again and again, and wider and wider she smiled.

Finally, she cracked, giggling for what seemed like a minute.

I’m eager to sing other songs to her, and to tell her why those songs are special to me. But it’ll be different. Maybe we’ll be sitting next to each other on the couch, or maybe she’ll be talking over me because attention spans are what they are. And that’s fine. It’s great. It’s life.

It may get easier, but I’m really going to miss this time.