Four Months
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Little Girl,
Another month has marched by. Today you are four months old.
Four months. You are now fourteen pounds. You have lost your fragility, but are still so small. You can’t yet speak, but you can certainly communicate. You have lost most of the hair you were born with and now your head is covered in white blond fuzz. Your eyes are blue, a bold hue, and continue to brighten. Your smile is sweet, and wise. You are already a keen observer, following your sisters as they skip around you, noticing the patterns on pillows and the leaves on trees. You have rolled over a few times which makes me at once proud and sad. Proud that you are making progress. Sad that it is happening so fast. Because it is.
Truth be told, you are a tricky one. As tricky as you are beautiful. At this point, you are quite the Mama’s girl. Some babies are mellow and can be passed around and will coo at whomever cuddles them. You are not just some baby. These days, I am the only one who can get you to drink your bottle, and can soothe you quickly, bringing your cheeks back from that shocking magenta to soft pink.
This is hard. Because I feel utterly tethered.
But this is wonderful. Because I feel utterly tethered.
Secretly, I hope you stay a bit of a Mama’s Girl. I hope I continue to comfort you and keep you calm. I hope I keep getting those early morning prize smiles and late night nuzzles. I hope you don’t grow up too quickly, and become independent too fast.
But I know you will. Because that’s the way it works. You will grow up and away. You will become your own person, strong and smart and sassy. Just like your sisters. I know how this happens because I have lived it twice before you. One moment you are small, on your back on a playmat kicking your chubby legs, and the next you are up and at ‘em, running fast, evolving, becoming free.
On Monday, we celebrated your first Independence Day. I put you in a silly, scratchy little star-strewn outfit from Target and your Little Sister sun hat. We took you to a parade. I walked you away and covered your ears as the canons fired. You were tired and hungry and warm and screamed bloody murder while I bopped you and sweat through my navy-striped tee. It was a tough morning, but even as I lived it, I celebrated it, this time, this tangle, this dependence that will too quickly flee.
I love you, tiny thing. You make me a wee bit crazy and a whoa bit tired, but I adore every ounce of you. Thank you for the continuing and complicated privilege that is being your mother.
Love,
Mommy
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Do you both struggle with, and celebrate, the fact that someone depends so mightily on you? Do you agree that in many ways when it comes to parenthood every day is “independence day” insofar as our kids grow more and more independent by the day? Do you remember your kids at four months? If so, what were they up to?
Oh, I so know what you mean. My baby’s now a month old, and she’s beginning to develop an affinity for being held to sleep so yesterday, during the party we were hosting at our house, I was mostly with the babe, who was especially fussy. I barely got to talk to anyone while I nursed and held her in the bedroom. To be needed like that was rough but I also realized that this is fleeting, so while the others enjoyed their sangria, I rocked my little girl in my arms. Because I could and I wanted to. Besides, there will be plenty of sangrias in my future. To be a mom to a newborn? This may be my last.
It’s a little easier from my vantage point – 5 months pregnant. At this point I cheer all of IEP’s newest accomplishments because I know that I have all of babyhood waiting on the horizon. I fear, though, that it will all be harder after #2 is born and I start having these same feelings of, “This is the last time that X will happen.”
It is so hard sometimes because it is so tiring and so fleeting. My two daughters are 3.5 and 6 months. My nursery has a glass french door and my favorite thing is to pause and watch my little one sleep. On one hand there is a part of me that so craves getting at least a portion of my old life back, but there is another part that can’t imagine passing the nursery door and not having a baby sleeping peacefully there. I keep returning to the Kitchen Witch post “The Witching Years” and Lindsay’s post on it (thanks for introducing me to A Design so Vast). They both so capture this time in life so well. So do you. Thanks for always seeming to put to words what I am thinking.
I remember those days and though I obviously wasn’t breastfeeding I felt tethered in a different sort of way. I wanted to be helpful but there was only so much that I could do and sometimes it was really frustrating.
It all moves so quickly- one moment they can’t do anything on their own and the next they are running away to try the next thing.
At 4 months we took baby S to NYC for the first time to meet her baby pals. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago but the time does fly. Luckily for me she has always been, and continues to be, a tethered Mama’s girl. I love it and know it will end, or at least lessen, eventually, but I say enjoy every minute. It is delicious to be so tethered to a yummy little babe!
Although I cannot boast about seeing my own children grow up too fast since I have none (yet!), I can agree with you in that sometimes time just goes by too quickly. I’m currently exploring my own new found independence as a recent college grad. And sometimes it will just hit me – where did those four years go? Where did my youth go? My ability to lean on my parents for support. I find myself standing on my own two feet with endless possibilities in front of me. It is exhilarating and exciting but also terrifying. What if I totally mess everything up? Time is funny that way …
Congrats to you in this absolutely wonderful time. I remember babysitting a baby around this age when I was in high school. As soon as I held that little girl I knew that one day I needed to be a mother. Anyway the summers I spent with that girl were some of the best of my life. I’m sure that this summer is turning into that for you: a summer you will never forget even though it seems to fly by in the blink of an eye!
Sweet. How wonderful it will be someday when she reads this