4 Months Picture Post!

Dear Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, and Papa,

I know we just got to see most of you (we missed you, Papa!), but you know how I am.  Always changing and stuff like that.  So I'm going to tell you a little bit what it's like to be FOUR months old!

This is me and my Kekoa teddy at four months old.  We're the same height!  I'm pretty good at sitting up now with a little support.  I can sit by myself for a few seconds, but then I usually faceplant and I don't really like that.

 

Fall is here.  I don't know exactly what that means, but mommy says it everytime she bundles me up.  I really like being changed, so it's great to wear extra clothes!  I like to stretch out changing times so that I get as much attention as possible.  

 



 

Sitting up isn't the only skill I've been working on.  My feet are my new favorite toy!  I love to suck on my toes.  

 

Also: for some reason, Mommy is obsessed with matching my diapers to my outfits.  I'm not sure why, because they're just going to have to be changed anyway.  Girls.  Anyway, that's why there's a picture of me in my underpants.  I'm so embarrassed.

 

 

I also liked playing with my fingers for the first half of the month, but I'm over it now.  That was soooo two weeks ago.

 

We had a hurricane here last week.  You guys were all worried about us, but I don't know why.  I love hurricanes!  They brought three of my favorite things:  Daddy stayed home from work for TWO WHOLE DAYS, we had a pajama day, and Daddy read to me before my naps.

 

We're reading A Very Hungry Caterpillar by a guy named Eric Carle.  I'm a fan of his.  It all started when Mommy read A Grouchy Ladybug to me.  I liked the pictures so much that she pulled out the other Eric Carle books we had: A House for Hermit Crab and The Tiny Seed (Mommy's friend Molly gave it to me!).  I love the big, bright pictures, and sometimes I like to hold the book (I'm still trying to figure out how the pages work).  Now we always read books before naptime so that I'm calm enough to sleep.

 

 

Again with the matching diaper.  Mom!

Anyway, those are the changes of the last month, and there are LOTS more on the horizon.  Because of my reflux, the doctor said it'd be a good idea to start me on solids soon, and I couldn't agree more.  I'm so jealous of my cousins who get to eat real food, and I'm always trying to grab at Mommy and Daddy's food.  Once I managed to get a handful of ketchup and I licked it ALL off my fingers.  Yum!  Next time I'm going for the whipped cream!

I'm still a little guy - 13 pounds - but Mommy says that's not a surprise at all considering my genes.  And she says that I should be grateful because she can carry me longer.  I do love being carried, so I guess that's a good thing.  I'm sleeping much better now, so we're all a lot happier.

Love you all!

Kekoa

These are the broken days

There used to be a name for days in which at least one member of our household cried.  We called them bad days.

Now we call them normal days. 

There's a new kind of day now.  They are the days where the baby wakes up choking on his own congestion and we pin down all four of his flailing limbs and suck the snot out with a bulb syringe.

The days when dad barely makes it two steps in the door before the baby is thrust into his arms and the wife is clinging to his neck.

These are the broken days.  The exhausting days.  The fridge-is-empty-because-no-way-was-mom-going-to-wake-baby-up-for-grocery-shopping days.

We have the stereotypical romantic days too, holding baby in the rocking chair as he gazes up adoringly.  Plump baby hands grasping fingers.  Sloppy baby kisses on the cheek.  Waking up to baby coos and gurgles (dear manufacturers, why is that not a programmed alarm feature?)

But I've come to realize:

That the easy days are a manifestation of the love I build up on the broken days.

I don't choose to love him when he nestles secure in my arms.  My love for him isn't growing.  I'm simply feeling.

I choose to love him when I'm siphoning the snot out of his nose at two in the morning.  And believe me, it's not a feeling.  It's a cold, hard reality. 

I love him, and it is hard.  I love him, and sometimes I wish it wasn't quite so much so I could give away the awful responsibility of a mother's love.

I think I love him most on the days when I'm so broken I'm just not sure how I'm going to make it through the day as his mommy.  Let alone four more kids. [or just one more.  At some point impossibility has no degrees] 

Someday, he'll be an adult holding his newborn son for the first time and I will reminiscence and tell him how much I loved his own little baby self.  And he will think I loved rocking him, holding him, tickling him. 

He will be right, of course.

But he won't realize that in my mind, I'm thinking of the baby whose nose was always running and whose little legs were simply too skinny to create a tight diaper seal.  I don't love him in spite of the broken days.  I love him because of them.  Because they force my love to grow enough to overcome, sacrifice, withstand.

The broken days cannot be separated from the lovely.