India: Month five

Dear India, my sweet, sweet girl,

Today you are five big months old. Sometimes I can't believe you've gotten so big, and sometimes when I look at pictures from even a couple months ago, I can't believe you were ever so small.

You are relentlessly smiley and happy and charming. When I nibble on your neck, which I try to do at every opportunity, you giggle. Sometimes you shriek in delight, just out of the blue. Like, wheeeee the breeze! Hello, world!

I love how you're not afraid to mix your prints. And it turns out, to my delight, that you too view animal prints as a neutral.  I also covet this shirt. I hope that I'm stylish enough that you will want to raid my closet when you're older.

Hopefully I won't have taken to wearing Mrs. Roper muumuus or something equally unfortunate. If I have, the future you needs to give me a good talking-to, okay?

Last week, at your slightly late four-month appointment, we learned you had exactly doubled your birth weight. You have these deliciously plump cheeks and chubby arms and scrumptious dimpled legs.

You've recently discovered your feet, and when I picked you up from day care the other day, you were in a new pair of socks. Because you'd gotten your socks thoroughly soaked with the chewing.

You actually quite like your stroller, but in this moment, it looked so much like prison that I had to document it. You shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die.

I love this picture of you, because it looks like you have a devil horn, which is perhaps unfair. But I'm pretty sure that you are going to have a gleefully wicked side. I'm not so much on bows on babies, but your aunt Jenny gave this to you and I couldn't resist the whole ensemble.

You are clearly delighted by your older brother, and it so clearly makes him feel good. He's proud of you. He refers to you as HIS baby. As in, "Is my baby upstairs?" "Are you going to put my baby to bed now?"

I love this age, I truly do. The smiles, the giggles, the feet, the new noises. I find it kind of exhausting, however, in that you and Jordan both NEED so much at the same time. Some nights I get you bathed and into bed and then I turn my attention to Jordan and once he's in bed I take a hot hot shower and tuck myself in, too. And we're all asleep by nine pm.

Because you, my little friend, have been a terrible sleeper. There is no reason, I have told you repeatedly, to be up four times in a night, as is your current preference.

With our pediatrician's blessing, we've started sleep training. It's going slowly and painfully, but we seem to be progressing. You fall asleep on your own fine, but when you wake up in the night YOU WANT ATTENTION! AND BOOB! NONE OF THIS BACK-PATTING BULLSHIT, YOU ASSHOLES. Is generally how it's been.

Just because I am delighted when you and your brother are both asleep, sometimes so much so that I giggle with glee and then pour myself a giant glass of wine, does not mean that I don't love you both so much more than I could ever have imagined. Because I do.

Sometimes I see you and catch my breath, I love you so immensely.

I'd just like a little more goddamn sleep.

Love love love,

Mama