Quincy, 1 month

Quincy, Quinca-roo, Quincer, Stretchy, Milkyface, Junior -- Happy one month birthday and welcome to the blog!

I fear that I will not be able to do as much writing about you as I did about your older brother -- you can blame him for replacing my writing time with LEGO time, puzzle time and arguing about eating lunch time.

But back to you. You arrived one month ago via the traditional exit a mere 12 minutes before your scheduled eviction. Everyone was shocked having resigned ourselves to a second c-section. 7lbs 12oz, 21 inches long, perfect.

You came out of the womb looking like your daddy -- so says almost everyone. I imagine it must be true even though I can’t really see it. I was similarly unable to see people’s claims that your brother looks like me. But you have blond hair and eyebrows and a round head so it is likely that a fair bit of daddy genes are shining through.

I’m happy to report that even though you were a real wild man in the womb now that you’re out you are a relatively chill baby. You don’t mind being left by yourself in your crib or bouncer and when you cry it’s almost always because you need something obvious. Mostly you need milk. But it also seems much of your crying is directly related to a need to burp, fart or poop. The cries are often preceded by long annoyed grunts which can go on for hours especially at night. I feel almost as bad for you as I do for my sleepy self.

You are already the king of spitting up. I know this usually peaks around 4 months which is horrifying considering the volume of spit up that you already produce.

Your brother loves to ‘nuggle us both -- sliding in under my arm on one side of me and reaching his own arm over your back as you sleep on my chest. He likes to trace your ears and tell me how small they are. On the day you were born he announced that your name would be Dinosaur Robot and he continues to bring this up a month later, thinking it a much better name than Quincy. He tell me how much he loves you on a daily basis. He also did your immune system the favor of bringing home your first cold before you were even a month old so you have a sad hacking cough that bothers mom much more than it seems to bother you or the doctor. So far so good on that big brother thing.

I am afraid of doing too much comparing of you and your brother but it’s difficult because he is my only other baby data point. So. You are calmer (we have almost never had to take you into the bathroom to chill out to the soothing sounds of the vent). You are fairer. You are less worried over. You are less photographed.  You at bigger (94th percentile for height!).

I am calmer. I almost never get up to check your breathing. I'm less sure that there is a method to baby madness and less inclined to google every whimper grunt or cry. I've learned that most of the time the answer to "Why is my baby _________?!?!?!?" is "Babies: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I am also less overwhelmed and surprised by my love for you. Before you were born I had the usual second time mom concerns that I could not possibly love you as much as I loved Casper or that I would somehow love Casper less. But none of those fears have come to pass. You are both loved equally and more than I could have ever imagined.

Casper, Months 13 and 14

Dear Squirm-bot 5000,

As you get older, I get lazier (or is it more tired? Hard to say.). Welcome to this decade's answer to laziness -- the listicle!

Things Casper Can Do

Walk. Like a penguin. Like a baby fawn. Like a drunken sailor. Like the most efficient and ridiculous version of all three of these things put together

Refuse food. Smirking, nose in the air, mouth clamped closed in a thin line, uttering a dismissive and bemused “uh,” as you turn your head away from things that just yesterday you devoured.

Find specific books and bring them to an adult to be read.  A cute trick that sadly enables never-ending afternoons spent reading books that I’m fast getting sick of.

Find a way to shove shapes into the right holes in your shape sorter toys even though you for sure do not know your shapes. You know that things can go into the holes and that if you twist them around and try all of the holes probably what you are holding will fit in somewhere. Trial and error plus determination are powerful tools.

Things Casper Loves

Baths. So much so that I have to not bring them up until the water is ready in order to avoid tears of impatience. So much so that I have to physically restrain you from clambering over the side of the tub to dive face first into the water/dry bath tub.

Books. I should be one of those parents who brags about her child’s love for reading but mostly I’m one of those parents who occasionally helps certain books go missing because she simply cannot read about lame-o Winter Friends for a 45th time in one day.

Empty carbs. Just like everyone else.

Knocking down towers of blocks and screaming a loud and proud “Eeeeeeeee!!!!!” It’s rare that I can get even 3 block on top of one another in this house before destructor swoops in.

Rolling off of the changing pad in the middle of a diaper change and toddling your naked butt all over my house. Giggling the whole time and looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re being chasing.

Bananas, yogurt drops and graham crackers. All of which have to be hidden in the cupboard with our glasses -- you’re on to the pantry and the wonder is holds.

My ear. Months ago when you started having a hard time going to sleep we tried to introduce a small stuffed bunny named Claude as your love-y. At night we all say good night to Claude and then he cuddles up with us before bed. And then all night long you ignore him. There is little love for Claude. But as soon as I pick you up, when I rock you, when you're tired, when you're crying... you little hand paws at my face, pushing my head to the side, creeping crawling up to my ear. You knead the lobe and trace the outline with your fingers before grabbing on and settling in for a snuggle.

Things Casper Hates

When Mama leaves. Even my morning bathroom break requires reassurance that I’m coming right back.

Having a fever and being forced to go sledding. (In my defense I didn’t *know* you had a fever until later and then I felt so bad that I let you sleep in the big bed with mom and dad all night).

Napping in his crib. Currently banned from life. Big bed 4EVER!!!!!

Casper, Month 11

11 months is a weird little spot -- so overshadowed by the looming end of your first year. But this month has been its own little bundle of highs and lows. You're fast outgrowing baby-dom and it leaves me desperate to savor it. I often feel panicked that I have not captured enough of the baby you (though a quick glance at my gigs of pictures would indicate otherwise). I am torn between forgetting what my baby was like and excitement over meeting my little boy. I try to be in the moment. And so here is this moment, 11 months.

Back in month 7 we sleep trained you. Silly dad and I thought that was it -- you were trained, you went to bed, you slept, you woke up in the morning. It was bliss and we were so proud. So sure that we had cracked the baby sleep code. Such naive newbies. Some other mother wrote in her blog that she had thought that she had beaten the sleep training game and then was shocked to discover that she only passed the boss on world 1. We arrived at a new level this month and it is like one of those bullshit underwater levels in Super Mario. The ones where you have to flap Mario’s arms at just the right speed to keep him above the stupid fish floating near the bottom but below the dumb flying fish ready to gulp you up at the surface. And just when you think you’ve found that perfect balance you run into a column of those mystery bubble that push you upwards and slam you into a jellyfish -- then you’re fish food. Many nights this month I have felt like fish food.

As with most things baby I’m not exactly sure what was going on with you. It could have been teething, it could have been the discovery of object/mommy permanence, it could have been a bit of hunger since the world is often too interesting for you to focus on nursing during the day. But I think the main problem was that you have figured out how to pull up to standing in your crib. This makes sleep protests so much more dramatic. In addition you have really upped your screaming game. Gone are the infant mews and fusses. Now we have howls worthy of horror flicks. You don’t know how to talk yet but somehow you’ve managed to communicate expletives that would make a sailor blush. Many times at the beginning of the month we gave in and brought you into our bed where everyone could sleep -- me with a baby foot in my face but it (mostly) beat trying and failing over and over and over to put you down. Whatever the core issue eventually mom and dad brought the sleep training hammer back down on you and we cried it out together and now, again, we all sleep all night (separately).

Remember last month when I said that you loved me most of all? I had no idea. You love me more. Or, rather, you hate not being with me. Unfortunately, loving your mom the most does not mean you are always happy when you are with me or that you greet me with only snuggles and compliments about how thin I look. It means that you are a royal asshole whenever I go to the bathroom alone. It means I sometimes have to hold your hands while dad changes your diaper. It means I scream the words, “I’m RIGHT HERE.” from every corner of the apartment in a futile effort to stop the whines. I’m flattered, I guess. I love you too.

You started properly crawling at the beginning of the month. You prefer a lopsided creeping motion with one foot pushing off behind you and acting as motor. Between this and your brave cruising between the furniture, you are everywhere. There is a lot of falling. This is the month that you can look back on should you ever worry about childhood bumps to the head having caused permanent damage. To make matters worse you managed to make real your dream of diving head first off of mom and dad’s bed. No obvious damage is visible at this time but I will personally look back on that moment one day when, as a surly teen, you forget to take out the garbage for the fifth time in a row. It was cold comfort that you took this moment to whimper out a sad "mama" for the first time.

In the war of Casper vs the baby proofing you are losing.... but just barely. Despite vigorous tugging and banging all but one of the cupboard locks has held (you can now access the pots and pans, if we had to lose a lock that was arguably the least necessary one). You did end up victorious in the battle of the corner covers -- none remain on the coffee table or the entertainment center. There is something poetic about turning around to see you crawling towards me with something that we bought to protect you hanging out of your mouth like a chew toy.

You’re much more vocal this month. You’ve become a bit of a mimic -- willing to play little call and response games with your screams or lip smacks. You’re saying Dada with meaning. As mentioned above, you also, seem to be saying mama… but there is no glee in it. “Dada” is for laughs, for silly screams, for prideful babbling. “Mama” is only to be used when sobbing. Beyond actual words your nonverbal communication is blossoming. You can whine with intention to let us know when you want to walk, when you want a cracker, when you don’t want to be held. You've developed an impressive back arch to say, "I do not want to be in the stroller, I do not want to be held, I do not want." You've also become quite the little smoocher - offering wet kisses to me and dad and your reflection in the mirror and all of your stuffed animals.

You’re finally really into books. You’ll sit still through multiple stories and tolerate a diaper change if you can hold a book aloft in your two little fists gazing up the pages. You like to caress the faces of all of the characters, you like to help turn the pages.  

You remain a happy little guy. When we took you in to get a flu shot the nurse pronounced you jolly which seems especially apt given your ever growing Santa-like belly. You love bananas and can easily put away a whole one grabbing slice after slice and using both hands to shove it into your mouth. You love kicking balls, walking with your walker, animal noises, Grandpa’s dried pears, drinking water from a sippy cup, hiding under the blankets in my bed, when daddy gets your hinny, when I sing “Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, shake your bushy tail,” and when I steal your paci (this is, perhaps, the height of comedy).

Onward we go to even bigger milestones.

Casper, Month 10

You are still a baby but this month, for the first time, I see glimpses of a little boy and it is freaking me out. Maybe it’s that mess of hair that is fast growing over the tips of your ears. Maybe its your insistence on being upright as much as possible. I had my first and second cries over your growing up this month. Never has time moved so quickly. Never before has 1 year, 5 years, 18 years felt like not long enough.

November and your first birthday are painfully close. I find myself regularly wishing that you would stop growing, stop aging and then scolding myself because getting bigger and older is what healthy babies do.

It has been, once again, a month full of milestones. You started clapping on 8/24 -- I have never received so many rounds of applause for so little actual performance. The next day you surprised me by cruising from the ottoman to the entertainment center -- a leap of only 5 inches, but a leap all the same. 

On 9/2 your nanny, Kenesha, showed us that she has taught you to do an indian call which left me feeling super non-PC for the rest of the month as I tried to explain the trick without explicitly calling it an “Indian call” (“You make an “ahahahaha” noise by bouncing your hand on your lips? Do you know what I mean?”).

You’ve continued to put off traditional crawling and we worry that you’ll forgo it entirely in exchange for early walking. You are a pretty proficient army crawler -- swimming across our hardwood floors when motivated to chase a toy train or snack on some electrical cords. On 9/4 you started getting up onto hands and knees and revving your engine by rocking back and forth but you revert to the tummy crawl when you actually want to go anywhere.

By 9/6 you were pulling yourself up on the edge of the bathtub or onto the ottoman and on 9/8 I officially lost my happy sitter. Gone is the baby who would stay quietly on his blanket immobile and playing with toys. Suddenly, you are everywhere. Under the jumperoo. Sampling dead leaves off of the doormat. Pulling the power strip out from behind the armchair. I will never be able to sweep enough to keep the outside out of your insides. I have already, multiple times, considered the cliche of taping a swiffer pad to your belly to exploit the free cleaning opportunities that an army crawling infant presents.

You want, very badly, for someone (anyone, really) to let you hold their fingers so you can walk around all day long. Often when I move to set you down you lock your knees to try to force me into a walk-a-thon. If I do manage to detangle my fingers from yours and step away I must endure cries of outrage followed by rivers of baby tears.

This probably doesn't count as an actual milestone but you have also discovered my face this month and have taken a real conquistador approach to the exploration. You push my head to the side so you can fiddle with my ear. You force your little fingers between my lips to feel my teeth. In the morning when you're lying between your dad and I in our bed you seem to wait until one of us starts to drift off before shoving your pointer finger up into our nostrils. This is not my most favorite thing about you.

Despite the nose rape you've made morning my favorite time of day. Before you were born I slept until 8 and couldn't imagine enjoying a 6:30am wake up call. But you are so joyful after a good night of sleep. I can't help but look forward to your snuggles and giggles even if the sun has yet to rise. All three of us get a solid two hours of hanging out together before the day really begins and it feels like truly stolen moments. It's 7am. No one ever calls or texts. No one expects us to be anywhere but home. These found hours are just for you. I'm more tired at night than I used to be. I go to bed at 10pm and feel like kind of a loser for doing so but being lame is worth it.

Casper, Month 9

Every month I am shocked again that, somehow, a whole month has passed. Here we are at time number 9 of feeling this exact same way. 9 month dude. 9.

You love eating and standing. You love when daddy comes home from work. You love looking at yourself in the mirror. You love to scream. You love the swings at the park. You love animal noises and tickles. You love peek-a-boo and hiding under a blanket. And you love your mom most of all. I’m flattered, if a little sick of the whining. If only I would carry you around all of the time life would be perfect and you would never have to sit alone on the floor surrounded by toys (THE. WORST.).

This month you grew a lot of hair -- a mass of straw. Just the type of hair we imagined that you would have. It seemed to appear suddenly over the course of a few hours. One day, I went to work, leaving my mostly bald baby with his nanny and I returned that evening to a child with a full head of blond hair.

You’ve developed a weird snorting hiss that you perform, paired with arm flailing and clasping hand

motions, when you get very excited. It’s both adorable and the nerdiest thing ever.

You remain stuck when it comes to crawling -- you push with your feet and snow plow your head into the floor then push yourself up with your arms, but alas, never at the same time. After two or three tries you collapse onto your belly frustrated. You’re adept at army crawling around in a circle and can drag your body forward across mom and dad’s bed -- usually to grasp dad’s iPhone (Aka “black rectangle”).

Early in the month I captured the following tale of woe for posterity...

It was morning -- 8am, but you’d been up since 6:20. You’d just enjoyed a breakfast/bath of pineapple and were sticky enough to warrant a shower with Dad. Sticky enough that I decided to strip you down in the bathroom rather than get pineapple juice all over your room. Off came the onesie, the diaper cover, the snappi -- Dad joked, “hope there’s no poop in this diaper!” -- obviously this jinxed everything. Poop. So much poop. A cloth diaper filled to the brim with orange mush speckled with undigested apricot skins. For a moment I was frozen, unsure how to proceed.

For those unfamiliar with the cloth diaper routine allow me to describe how a normal poop should go. Baby is on the changing table (aka, "the floor" because we live in a small NYC apartment and obviously don't have enough room for an actual changing table.) -- dirty diaper is folded up and moved to the side. Baby is re-diapered. Soiled diaper is taken into the bathroom and clipped to the Spray Pal then hosed down in the toilet with a diaper sprayer so all poop can be flushed. (Yes, we do this for every poop. Yes, I assume Mother Earth herself will greet me upon death and personally escort me to heaven as thanks for all of the non-biodegradable diapers that I did not deposit into a landfill.) Diaper is then squeezed out into the toilet (again with SprayPal on the assist) and deposited in diaper pail. The SprayPal step is, technically, optional -- you could hold the diaper while spraying but this causes poop water blowback to hit you and I prefer as little poop water on my person as possible. It’s also possible to forgo spraying and dunk the entire diaper into the toilet but then your hand is literally taking a swim in poop water. Dad and I are big fans of the SprayPal

Back to the story. Dad springs into action, removing the diaper full of poo from my hand (“oh god there is poop on my hand!”) and proclaiming that we will spray the baby's butt off directly into the toilet. This is… unconventional... and possibly dangerous. Baby butt, being an uneven surface and unpredictably wiggly; the spray back could be lethal. BUT! This it still sort of seems like a good idea. In fact, it *IS* a good idea.

You were not on board. I held your legs up and pointed your derriere down into the toilet bowl then dad started spraying your bottom side off while your tears sprayed your face (at least that was helping a bit with the pineapple juice?). After that it was into the shower with Dad -- something you only sort of tolerate on a day when you’re not already tearing up from your butt-only, pre-shower shower.

It was a tough morning for everyone involved. When you recount the details under therapist induced hypnosis 20 years from now try to remember that I had to touch poop.

You and I made another trip to California this month. You, once again, rocked your 4th roundtrip plane flight -- sleeping through half of it in both directions. Your cousins, Dalanie and Zayden, were much more impressed with 8 month old you than they had been with 2 month old you. You got many tickles and peek-a-boos. Grandpa Horst  called you “Little Putz” and carried around to meet their dog, Annie, who licked at your feet and Gino, one of Grandma’s horses who, somehow, didn’t freak out when you stuck your entire hand into his nostrils. Grandma Kay rented you a cabana at the pool in Vegas -- we all used it but it was decidedly for you. She has never even considered renting me a cabana.

We had a couple of playdates with my cousin Mallory’s daughter Rosalyn who is 3 weeks older than you. There was tandem chewing and frustrated failed attempts to crawl. Rosalyn made me much more aware of your personality. She is a serious little girl -- all scowls and resting bitch-face (the cutest possible resting bitch face). I had to work hard with silly faces and cootchi-coos for just one smile. This is never the case with my little golden retriever of a baby. You also tried so hard to get Roz to jabber and smile with you -- you did all of your best dadadas and screams. You bounced and squealed all to very little reaction. Seeing the two of your together reinforced that you are huge, huge goofball. Not because all babies are, but because you are.

I’ve set myself up over the last few months with expectations of a touching end to each of these posts. It’s not that I don’t have it in me this month -- I love you more and more and more. But I’ve nothing new to to say. Perhaps I’m getting used to things and can no longer be shocked by this overwhelming love.

Casper, Month 8

Hello my 8 month old boy! My Big Chompers. My Poop Machine.

I recently reviewed your newborn pictures and discovered something alarming. You were not that cute. You had baby acne and baby-patterned baldness. You didn’t know how to smile. This raises serious questions about my own objectivity since I distinctly remember wondering how my newborn got so adorable. I also remember your father commenting at 5 weeks the he was afraid you had peaked for cuteness. In retrospect, this is insane. So while I want to report that, at 8 months, you are the cutest and always getting cuter, I cannot honestly assess the situation. To my eyes you are dangerously good looking, but in reality you might be a troll.

Your nanny, Kenesha, says you are "very advanced at eating." I'm sure that's code for, "a little piglet." You love food. You devour sweet potatoes, grilled zucchini, bagels, blueberry pancakes, cherry tomatoes, cheese and avocado toast. In most cases you take the Cookie Monster approach to eating -- fistfuls of noms head toward your mouth, 10% consumed, 90% turned into directionless projectiles. Sometimes it seems that all we’ve done this month is eat and bathe.

We’ve been taking the baby led weaning approach to food (a poor name for “give your baby food and let them eat it” -- we are by no means weaning you off of breast milk) and I cannot recommend it highly enough. However, I am no longer able to quietly snack around you -- as soon as you spot anyone eating, you unleash a chorus of whines until all food is shared. What a little communist. On one occasion you dive bombed your dad’s hamburger. Another time you stared so hard at a stranger on the subway as he munched on peanuts that I felt I had to apologize for the death glares being sent his way.

Eating adult food is messy business so we prefer to feed you out on the patio clad only in a diaper and a bib. Our bib of choice includes a handy trough where the food that didn't make it into your tummy can commingle into a half chewed soup. At month's start you didn't know about the trough but by early July you had discovered this exciting repository of back up food. You are happy to reconsider all trough options from plum coated in avocado to pineapple basted pasta.

You are now capable of sitting in a highchair at restaurants which has opened up scads of brunch options for your dad and I (no longer restricted to the occasional NYC venue big enough to house your stroller). Your happy to accompany us for the small fee of a croissant here, a fried potato there.

You’re not talking yet but, perhaps in preparation, your mouth has become very active (even when not eating). You’ve learned to smack your lips to produce a satisfying popping noise. You move your little mouth around like a ventriloquist dummy -- all motion and no sound. You bababa and dadada.  No mamamas yet, which I hear is to be expected.

You’ve become a screamer -- gleefully screeching like a little baby car alarm. I constantly have to reassure others that you’re not upset, just loud. I worry that our neighbors are unamused.

When I come home from work you attack me with opened mouthed drool-y kisses. Your lips banging against my cheek, head shaking back and forth, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” you shout.

All of the kisses are for mom but the guffaws are all for dad. That dude cracks you up without even trying. In the morning while you’re nursing in bed you crane your head back to gaze at him and giggle till the milk dribbles out of the corner of your mouth.

You are full of motion. You, "throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care." You flap your arms about in glee. Your little fists playing open/shut them on repeat. Drool streaming down your chin and soaking the front of your shirt. You absolutely Do. Not. Care.

You like to hold the outsides of my palms while I clap. You LOVE when I grab your palms and help you clap. Everything is worthy of celebration.

You’re showing your first real interest in books beyond tasting the corners just in case books turn out to suddenly be edible. You reach out while we are reading to grab at the pictures and slap your palm at the characters faces. Your favorite book, by far, is Carry Me. Your dad and I joke that you view the 10 pages with pictures of babies being carried in different ways (in a pack, on your back, etc.) as more bible than story. A convenient list of suggestions for ways your parents might consider executing the sacrament of carrying. You reach your own arms up out of the jumperoo or your crib -- jazz hands screaming, “Carry me! Carry me! Carry ME!”

My constant lesson is to focus on appreciating you as the baby you are today rather than panicking that you won't ever be this little ever again. It’s difficult at times. I don’t quite understand moms who want their baby to meet his milestones early. Being an advanced crawler doesn’t seem worth rushing through babyhood. I am much more worried about not having time to savor your babiness than I am concerned about having a gifted child. As much as I loved you as a newborn I am consumed with you as a chubby bundle of baby. I want to eat you. I cannot kiss you enough. I whisper in your ear as you nurse, "You're my baby. Mama loves you. Mama loves Casper."

Casper, Month 6 (HALF A YEAR!!!! OMG. WTF?!?!?!?)

Here you are, the baby I was looking forward to -- plump and goofy and ready to be friends with everyone. You are easy with the smiles. A lover of fake sneezes (ahh! ahh! ahh-choo!) and boogedy-boogedy-boos.

You’ve discovered your feet and found them to be delicious. I once caught you with both feet pulled up to your mouth, motor-boating your toes. You are finally able to consistently find your thumb and I foresee a day in the future when we have to smear that awful tasting goop all over your nails.

The nickname that seems to have stuck is, “Doodle”. “Doodle Bear Casperoo” (aka, “The DBC”) when we're feeling verbose. “Grosser,” still gets tossed around when appropriate, as does, “Lil’ Nakes” and “Nakerson”. We’re a family who loves nicknames so we’ll keep switching this up but I like that you have a standard now -- you are my little Doodle.

This month I actually found myself wondering if you might turn out to be too attractive and then I mentally slapped myself for falling under the influence of crazy mama hormones.That said, your dad and I have had actual conversations about our worries that you could grow up to be very attractive and we would have no idea how to deal with this. Nerdy awkward dork? We feel prepared for the challenges that plague that kind of kid. Popular and handsome? We’ve no tools for that.

You are still working hard on the back to belly roll. We know you can do it, having found you at least once in your crib on your belly, but I don’t think you know that you can do it. You spend a lot of time on your back twisting your hips and then looking up at us forlornly. On April 25th you rolled from back to belly while holding my finger and pulling for leverage. You do this a lot but your dad says that it doesn’t count as actually rolling over. That dad is a stickler.

On April 23rd you became mobile. Unfortunately the specific motion that you chose was leaping the 4 feet from the changing table to the floor. I had looked away for the cliched one second (to wash the poop off of your onesie, obviously) when I heard *BANG* *CRY* and I knew exactly what had happened. I ran into the bedroom expecting to find you at the base of the dresser, having finally mastered rolling from back to front. But there was no baby to be found there. After a millisecond of wondering where exactly you could have gone (rolled under the bed? under the dresser? jumped up and walked over the the liquor cabinet for a much deserved shot of bourbon?) I found you face down to the left of the dresser. (see my super awesome diagram below).

Only you will ever know how you managed to move in this direction. I’m pretty sure you didn’t stand up and belly flop off the edge of the dresser but I also don’t think you rolled over. After much discussion with Grandma Kay and Dad we think you torqued your hips and caught the side of the changing pad with a foot and then used that leverage to heave yourself over the edge. You were fine, by the way. Shockingly fine. I picked you up, you nursed for all of 2 mins and then you popped off all, “Hey! What’s up! That was crazy!” I checked and rechecked you for marks but there was nothing.

It would come as a huge shock to my pregnant self that this has been my most difficult month as a mom (and not just because of your suicide dive). I had built up a lot of dread around the newborn months, sure I would be a hormonal mess still recovering from major surgery with bleeding nipples and severe sleep deprivation. And then months 1-3 turned out to be mostly a joy -- not even the weeks on end of subfreezing weather could get me down! But just when I thought I was out of the woods and psyched to enjoy spring with an adorable baby you surprised me again.

From around 10 weeks through to 4.5 months of age you were a sleeping machine -- 6, 7, even 8 hour stretches of conked out sleepy baby would pass from 11pm onward. It was glorious. And, because I didn’t want to brag or jinx it, I said nothing to much of anyone. And then it stopped. So much for the power of not jinxing. You woke up twice a night. You woke up every 3 hours. Every 2 hours. Every 1 hour. You want the paci. You want the boob. You want to drive me to an early grave.

In one particularly irrational moment during a midnight crying jag (mine, not yours), I thought, "I should just stay up. I should not go back to sleep and thus avoid the awful moment when you wake me up again." This seemed like a good idea that was totally workable. I felt I had stumbled upon the answer: Just never sleep again.

Your remaining saving sleep graces are: 1) You can put yourself to sleep if we lay you down drowsy and 2)  You go back to sleep pretty easily after waking in the middle of the night. Pop in the boob, suck for 3mins, back to dreamland. I also go back to sleep pretty easily, so though being awoken multiple times a night to baby distress is… distressing... I’m still (in theory) getting a decent amount of sleep. Things have improved from the low point a few weeks ago but you’re still waking 2-3 times a night and your future may hold some crying it out. You have been warned.

I am lucky to have mom friends who tell me that it is ok if I do not love every moment of being a mom (despite all of the Facebook shares claiming otherwise, you are not legally obligated  to cherish every moment). I am doubly lucky to have truly enjoyed and cherished my time with you. Until this month. Casper, you are clearly going through some baby shit and, I get it, but I really need some sleep.

In light of the above Dad and I really needed a vacation, so we took you to Jamaica for a week (in fact I am writing this from our bungalow!). I can highly recommend traveling with an almost 6 month old. You discovered splashing and were all grins as we floated you around the pool. You tried your first food, a piece of pineapple, over the breakfast table one morning. You took many naps in the big bed, went for your first hammock ride and made friends with all of the hotel staff.

Half a year is unreal. Impossibly, it seems like I just brought you home and, at the same time, like you have always been in my life. Shortly after you were born Grandma Kay mentioned that being a mom was a love affair and she was right. My love for you often feels like a new discovery and I have to hold myself back from trying to explain it to others as if I'm the first mom to ever love her baby. I have to wonder occasionally if this love qualifies as an abusive relationship. Even after your worst nights when I'm teary and tired at 2am I look into your goofy face at 7am and all is forgiven. I let you get away with clawing my face until I bleed. I don't really mind when you pee on me. Babies are the ultimate deadbeats and mamas the most pathetic of victims.