The Fastest Four Months of My Life

It blows my mind to think that this little lady is four months old already.

It's amazing to think back to where I was a year ago.  A year ago, I had only known that I was pregnant for twenty days.  My only symptoms were some slight queasiness and breast tenderness.  It didn't seem real at all that parenthood was coming around the corner.  Now I can barely remember what it was like before she was born, before I was a mother.  It's easy to think of these milestones as just hers, but this also marks four months of being a mother, and four months of parenting with my amazing wife.  I like to think that I've gotten better at it and it's getting easier in many ways.

 This kid has so much personality and she's learned so many new things in just the past few weeks.  She's rolling over like a champ, any which way she likes.  She's grabbing everything she can reach and putting it in her mouth.  She's trying desperately to scoot, and she can move herself a few inches backwards.  When she's at home with her people, she hardly ever stops babbling or moving.  When we're out in the world, in new settings and with new people, she gets very quiet and watches everything with wide, thoughtful eyes.

 She's got a smile that will just melt you.  I'm working two days a week these days, and as hard as it is to leave her on those two days, the smile I get when I come home is the best thing in the world.  She has just figured out how to suck her thumb in the last four days.  It's the funniest thing because she puts her thumb in her mouth and the rest of her fingers are just splayed out over her face rather than in a fist.  She's also just starting to laugh.  She'd done it a couple of isolated times before today, but today she did it over and over again with Margo tonight.

 She had her first real trip last week, when we went to Chicago so that Margo could present at a conference sponsored by her agency.  I was so nervous about the air travel and staying in a hotel with a  baby, but she was amazing.  This in spite of having a terrible cold and fever for the first couple of days we were there.  She is so great at rolling with the punches, waking up somewhere different from where she went to sleep, and meeting new people.  She's so funny too, because when a new person holds her, she looks at Margo or I to make sure that it's okay, and if we smile at her, she's totally cool.  I don't know yet what she'd do if she didn't get that smile from one of us, but I suspect it wouldn't be pretty.

 We've also been going to story time at our local library on Friday mornings.  She's the youngest kid there by at least four months, but she loves watching the other kids and all of the games and songs.  One of her favorite things in the world is to be sung to by Margo or Grandma or me.  When she's fussy and nothing else will calm her down, singing to her almost always works.  We try to listen to a lot of music with her.

She's the coolest kid, and I'm so excited to see what she's got in store for us.  It's the most amazing thing in the world to have created this little person and watch her unfold into herself right in front of us.  I like to think that her happy, chill demeanor means that we're doing something right, although I think it's also just her natural temperament.