Dear Graham, Week 34

Dear Graham,
Today's letter looks a little different...that's because it's all about blue bonnets. Yes, I am dedicating an entire letter to flowers. And yes, I'm fully aware that you are a boy. Ever since we found out I was pregnant with you, I couldn't wait to take your pictures in the famous fields of Texas wildflowers. I know, most parents would probably look forward to other, more important milestones, say like walking or talking. But me, I've been checking the wildflower websites daily to see when these blue beauties were going to make an appearance.

So, this past weekend we went on a Sunday drive out toward Brenham, Texas in pursuit of blue bonnets. And for the first 30-plus miles outside of Houston, I have to admit I was getting a bit worried that we might be too early for the season. However, I put on a brave facade for your daddy, who was wondering more and more by the mile if I had truly lost my mind. Fortunately for both of us, you were sleeping soundly in the backseat and unaware of the impending doom that existed if we drove this whole way and couldn't find any blue bonnets.

Fortunately for all of us, we came upon it: a glorious field of Texas blue bonnets. We shouldn't have worried about being able to spot them; cars belonging to other anxious picture taking parents were lining the roads.

You woke up as we came to a stop and I couldn't wait to snap your pictures. Except, your normal "I smile around the clock personality" apparently decided to stay in Houston. The baby we got out of the car was serious, studious and not about to flash a smile. Despite how silly mommy looked when trying to make you grin. I'm not exaggerating when I say we took 200 pictures of you. And here are the only smiles (this includes the coercive tickling smile too):









You grab for anything in your reach these days, and blue bonnets were no exception. You love to study things and examine everything around you, which made trying to get you to actually look up at us for a picture extremely difficult.








You were even patient when we tried your new hat on you:



And when mom and dad joined in on the fun:





But that's okay, despite not wanting to cooperate with us for your inaugural blue bonnet photo shoot, we had a great time during this process. And I'm already counting down the days until we can do it again next year. (Or, until I can convince your daddy to go again in a few weekends.)

Love,
Mommy

Dear Graham, Week 33

Dear Graham,
I thought I’d use this week’s post to tell you what a “day in your life” looks like these days. I chose a weekend day since that’s when we get to spend the most time together.



4:45 a.m.-7:00 a.m. – Yes, these ungodly hours do exist on a weekend day. Despite our pleas to get you to sleep in, your wake up time remains sporadic. Just when you think mommy and daddy are getting a bit too comfortable in our new roles of sleeping through the night, you like to change things up a bit and vary your wake up time. For some reason you think it’s cool to get more sleep on weekdays when mommy has to wake you up and then on weekends you want to maximize our time together and wake up before the rooster. And, yes, your daddy did take you outside at 6:00 on Saturday morning to show you that the sun wasn’t even up yet. Judging by your wake-up time on Sunday morning, I don’t think you got the message.

5 minutes after wake-up a.m. – First bottle of the day.

Post-bottle until 8:00 a.m. – Play time! Play these days involves sitting up and playing with as many toys as you possibly can at one time. And the more noise those toys can make, the better.



As you sit on your blanket and play, if there are any toys out of you reach you stretch and reach to get them or roll to get them.

Which means sometimes we find you like this:


Or like this:


8:00 a.m. – Oatmeal time. Oatmeal became the replacement for rice cereal when you decided to go on the rice cereal strike. Apparently it tastes much better to you.

8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m. – While most people may just be waking up on their weekend day off, this is your time to lay down for a nap. If you woke up extra early, you get a bottle before naptime, which tends to make you very drowsy. But if it’s not bottle time yet, you always fight sleep at first. And your first line of defense is to be as vocal as you can. Because apparently if you’re talking, you know you’re not sleeping. So you coo and jabber and fuss and sigh and do just about anything you can to make noise. But eventually your heavy eyes give in and we put you in your crib when you’re just about asleep.

10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. – Wake up time! You often wake up refreshed and ready to go for the day. If you didn’t have a bottle before sleep, now’s the time.



11:00 a.m. – Time for more play. This time it’s time to play in the jumperoo, which you love. You spend time hopping up and down while grinning ear to ear.

Noon – Lunch time. Lunch these days consists of either a fruit or a vegetable. This weekend you tried mango for the first time and loved it. (Notice a trend here?)

1:00 p.m. – Time for nap number two. See notes above for nap number one.

2:00-3:00 p.m. – Wake up time! We normally find you cooing away in your crib after your naps, telling us you’re ready for us to come and play. We love the smiles you reward us with when we come into your room.

3:00 p.m. – Bottle time and then more play time. This time we go outside to get outdoor time in. This may include a walk to the neighborhood park to swing, a run in the jogging stroller or playing outside on a blanket. After outside time is done, we read, watch a Baby Einstein if mommy and daddy are trying to get something accomplished, or spend more time sitting up and playing. (By the way, I’m starting to think you may never crawl because you hate laying down and playing now. Laying down is sooo for littler babies and you’re a big baby now. Plus, by laying down you may miss out on seeing the action that’s going on around you. So instead you want to sit up and play all of the time.)

5:30 p.m. – Time to start thinking about a bath if it’s bath night. Again, you love, love, love your baths.

6:00 p.m. – Dinner! Dinner is another bowl of oatmeal and then a fruit or a veggie, the opposite of what you had for lunch.







6:30 p.m. -7:00 p.m. – Time for the bedtime routine. Bedtime routine includes playing classical lullabies, reading a story if you’re not too tired, putting you in your sleep sack, giving you a bottle, and prayers. I love rocking you before bedtime because you’re often truly tired and so you’re still. All throughout the day you’re too alert to be still, but in those special 10 minutes before bed I get to hold you and cuddle with you. I repeatedly try to freeze these still frames in my mind because you’re growing up more and more each day.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Graham, Weeks 31 and 32

Dear Graham,

I wish I had a better excuse for combining your letters this week, but in reality, it’s just life. That and you are more and more interactive these days, which makes me want to spend every moment that we’re together actually playing with you. This means those moments when you’re sleeping have been reserved for doing things like laundry, eating, cleaning and showering. You know, those important things that ensure our friends and coworkers actually want to be around us.

(Hey, not every picture can feature a smile!)

Your pediatrician’s office gave us a book before you were born that answers all kinds of different questions about infants and babies. This is so crazed mommies and daddies that get a crash course into parenthood those first few sleep-deprived weeks don’t call the doctor’s office at all hours of the day to ask about the abnormal color of babies’ poop. This book has been a gem and it’s often one of the first resources we consult. (And then we read Baby 411, compare the two for their similarities, differences and Graham-isms, proceed to have long conversations about which is most applicable, and ultimately walk away with no true answer, but comforted by the fact that you’re normal. But enough about our neurotic research tendencies; back to the pediatrician’s book.) At the very back of the book, they publish milestones you are to be hitting on a monthly basis. We get so excited when you demonstrate one of those milestones a month or two ahead of time. And then we tend to shy away from those that you’re not quite up to par with yet (i.e. when you were to be rolling over at 3 months. Or 4 months.).

However, this month you nailed your 7-month milestones to the point that if grades were given, you’d earn a 100%. One of which is banging your toys. I think you’re trying to get extra credit on this one by finding the loudest possible toy that you can bang against the hardest possible surface. And, to borrow a word from Charlie Sheen for a pop culture reference that you’ll be clueless about, you’re definitely “winning” with your combination of your stackable bath cups against the ceramic bath tub. You still love taking baths, but baths have taken on a whole new meaning (and decibel level) for mommy and daddy with your discovery of banging.

One of my favorite new tricks of yours isn’t in any book. Again, we have enjoyed such nice weather the past few weeks that every day we do something outside together. And over the past few weeks you’ve started to notice birds. You hear them first, and look straight up into the sky to locate where they are. If you can find them in your range of sight, you follow them as they soar through the skies. Once you can no longer see them, you hold your gaze there, wondering if they might come back. While it sounds so simple, it’s one of my favorite things to watch you do because it involves so many different thoughts. It’s like I can see your synapses firing away as you process this new discovery.

You still haven’t met a food you didn’t like, and I told your Grahamma it’s because of my good cooking. Over the last two weeks you’ve tried pears, green beans and zucchini, all of which you’ve gobbled right up. I’ve enjoyed making your baby foods from scratch and watching you as you taste the new things that I created. Hopefully you’ll still like such a variety of foods as you grow up.

Over the last month or so, when holding you, you will reach toward our face with a wide open mouth and give a “kiss” on our cheeks. For awhile, I just thought you were trying to get my face in your mouth, since you put everything you come across in your mouth. It took me awhile to realize this was actually a sign of affection and you often give your “kisses” after mommy and daddy kiss your cheeks. We love the wet, slobbery mess you leave behind.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Graham, Week 30

Dear Graham,
You are now as many weeks old as I am years old, a phenomenon that will only happen once in our lives.



There's so much to say about the past week. The biggest news is that you slept through the night. (Twice!) Even though mommy and daddy still tossed and turned expecting you to get up at some point, you slept through the night two times this week. We are so proud of you and are hoping that this new found skill of yours is one that you embrace.



On Monday we celebrated Presidents' Day, which gave us the chance to spend another whole day together. We again took advantage of the beautiful weather we've been blessed with and spent lots of time outside.

You also started avocado during the weekend, which you liked. Or so I thought. I received a call from your school on Tuesday afternoon that you "threw up all of your guacamole." Yes. Because I sent my almost seven month old son to school with guacamole. And a side of chips. Apparently other babies (and their mommies) aren't as adventurous as you are when it comes to trying new foods. Speaking of trying new foods, you also were introduced to peas this week and loved them.



In fact, you've been loving your fruits and veggies so much that this week you decided to go on a rice cereal strike. This coincided with a new trick you've learned this week--spitting. So, you decided to try out that new skill with the rice cereal you didn't want to eat. Which led to very messy feedings. The upside of this rice cereal strike is that you now like your carrots. Apparently to you anything is better than rice cereal.

Mommy had an event for work on Wednesday night so daddy had nightime routine duty all alone. When I texted him to find out how you were doing, this was his exact reply: "Good. He spit back the cereal at me. Spit up all in the tub, peed all over the floor while I changed the bath water, then once back in the tub, spit up again. We're bathing in spit up." It was all I could do not to laugh out loud at my dinner.



During your 3oth week the Shuttle Discovery launched for its last voyage into space. As I thought about the finality of its mission, it hit me that something that's been such a big part of my life won't be part of yours. Your view of the shuttle program will be similar to mine of the Apollo program: historic, but lacking a personal connection.

Because your dad and I are self-admitted space dorks (hey-we have to throw a little love space's way in gratitude for bringing us together), you will probably either love space too or not want anything to do with it. Regardless of your feelings, I hope that during your life's journey you find something that shows you what humankind is capable of when met with a challenge and in pursuit of a dream. I hope you find something that leaves you so full of wonder that you can't help but want to learn more. I hope you find something that makes you proud of the accomplishments of your country, excited about science, and leaves you in awe of the sheer capacity of our fellow human beings. In doing so, you'll experience what so many of us discovered through the space shuttle program.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Graham, Week 29

Dear Graham,
What big progress you've made in your sleep this week. I mentioned that with your last cold your sleeping patterns were essentially nonexistent. After you recovered we decided it was time for sleep training (Dr. Weissbluth is a genius), and we had one rough night of you protesting sleep. Don't worry, I'll remind you of this night when you're a teenager and want to sleep all hours of the day.



However, after the one night, it was like you were a new baby who we put down awake, fell asleep on his own and would put himself back to sleep when he woke up at night, aside from one night feeding. Seriously, who is this baby and what have they done with Graham?

As part of this effort we finally transitioned you from the swaddle to the sleep sack. And with this change, you're now sleeping in all positions all over the crib. Your dad and I have spent more time this week watching you sleep on the monitor than we've spent watching TV...who knew a sleeping child could provide such entertainment.

After a bitter cold start to February, over the last week we've enjoyed warmer weather with highs in the 70's. As such, we cannot spend enough time outside with you. We went on a hike and a run, spent time swinging at the park, helped daddy in the garage and have put down a blanket outside for you to play on. Every day this week has included some outside activity and you've been the happiest baby as a result.











(Sorry that the video is sideways and in poor shading. I promise Graham's giggles make up for it.)

You've had me fooled for some time when it comes to the mystery of when you might get your first teeth. For several months I've thought that by the way you put everything into your mouth, you were close to the teething process. Yet check after check of your gums revealed nothing. However, over the last week the inordinate amount of drool that falls out of your mouth at all hours is leading me to believe that you're actually getting close to teething. That or we have a serious drool problem that might interfere with your ability to attract the ladies one day.

Speaking of the ladies, apparently at school when you all have playtime on the mat, you go after the other little girl's feet, trying to pull of their socks. Pulling off your own socks is a favorite pastime of yours, but now you've discovered you can pull off other babies' socks as well. I'm not yet sure what to make of this news, except for the fact the the Little Flirt shirt you sported on your first Valentine's Day appears to be accurate.





New foods for this week include butternut squash and apples, both of which you ate and enjoyed.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Graham, Week 28

Dear Graham,



The biggest story of your 28th week is that you've officially started "real" foods. After much research, mommy decided to start you out with carrots. They are supposed to be easy to digest, have a low allergy risk, and be "somewhat" sweet, all of which combine to make them a great first baby food. Except apparently no one told you that was the case. You did eat the carrots, but your experience with them could best be described as "tolerable."



After the obligatory three days of eating carrots to ensure you had no allergies before beginning your next food, we introduced sweet potatoes. And boy, oh boy...sweet potatoes to you were everything carrots weren't. You couldn't get enough of the sweet potatoes as you anxiously awaited each next bite, actually moving your head toward the spoon to get the bite in your mouth as soon as you could.





Each of these new experiences continue to remind us of what a big boy you're becoming. This was especially evident near the end of the week, when you were sitting on mommy and daddy's bed as we got ready to go on a walk. You've been enjoying playing "peek-a-boo" with us for some time now, but it's always been mommy or daddy who initiate the game and do the "hiding." Well, while we were watching you sit on our bed, you leaned your face forward toward the bed as far as you could without toppling over, held your head there for a minute, and then popped your head up, looking at us with a big grin. You continued to do this over and over again, having invented your own version of the game.

Let me just tell you: the amount of pride I felt over your first self-initiated game of peek-a-boo was slightly ridiculous. Consider this your fair warning that I am going to be a big fat mess for your life's larger milestones. You just might go ahead and plan on medicating me for your first steps, kindergarten, graduation, marriage, etc.

Before having you, I never could have understood the inexplicable joy that you bring to our lives. And, now that you're here, I wonder how we ever lived without you.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Graham, Weeks 26 and 27

Dear Graham,

I can’t believe you’re now six months old and we’re counting down to your 1^st birthday instead of counting up. Time doesn’t fly when you’re having fun…it magically disappears instead.

You’ve had a big couple of weeks to mark this six month milestone. Last weekend you and mommy flew to Florida to spend a 3-day weekend while your daddy was working a trip. While we’ve flown alone before, this was the first time you and I managed the whole process start-to-finish solo, and I have to say we did a pretty good job. When we got to Florida, your Uncle Troy was waiting for us in baggage claim. It was a matter of seconds before he had you giggling away. After driving to Titusville, we placed you on the doorstep in your car seat, rang the doorbell and hid around the corner. Your Aunt Shannon was so surprised to see the bundle of joy who was waiting for her…and she couldn’t get you out of your carseat fast enough to give you kisses. We were able to surprise your great-grandma on Saturday and on Sunday we saw your great-aunts and uncles at a seafood lunch.

While all of the girls in the family went shopping, you spent the afternoon with your grandpa at the park. You love, love, love swinging and he spent nearly an hour swinging you! He also took you on several walks and you enjoyed the beautiful Florida weather.

During the last two weeks you also caught another cold that resulted in an ear infection in both ears. This is probably the direct result of it being 70 degrees one day and 30 degrees the next, which is healthy for all of us. Because of this, your sleeping patterns were thrown out the window, bringing mommy and daddy’s sleep right along with them for the ride. You’ve been inconsistent with waking and not wanting to go back to sleep in the middle of the night, which has been fun for the entire family.

You had your six-month appointment when on your 27th week "birthday" and you've grown so much! You're up to 17lbs, 5oz, which puts you in the 45 percentile. You are also now 26 and 3/4 inches long, which is in the 61 percentile. The doctor was pleased with your developmental progress as you showed off how you can coo and interact with him. Following the appointment he sent us to get a chest x-ray for you and your chronic cough. For a baby that never sits still, you did a wonderful job staying still during the few milliseconds it takes for the tech to snap the images.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time rocking you while you’ve been sick and peering down on your sweet sleeping face. The fierce protection I feel during those moments makes me want to envelop you in a barrier free from any harm, pain, heartbreak, sorrow or sadness. Not just today, but forever. While I know that’s impossible--and ultimately unhealthy and counterproductive--I do want to tell you something about those experiences that you’ll one day you're bound to have.

First, they are few and far between. The positive, wonderful, “I want to shout from the rooftops with joy” experiences far, far outweigh the bad ones. Second, these emotions normally come with a life lesson attached…don’t miss out on the message those experiences can teach. Finally, they enable you to be empathetic to others going through similar situations. Use that empathy to do good in someone else’s life.

Love,

Mommy