Monthly report, 4-5
Hi again, Adam–
Once again, it’s time to sit down and write the monthly report on your progress. This has been a big month in many ways: your physical growth seems to be going through a spurt. As mentioned last month too, we are constantly amazed by how l o n g you are growing, not to mention HEAVY. Jesus. This increase in weight that makes us think of marketing lead doorstop babies coincides with a huge need on your part to be carried in arms all, but all, the time. Okay, you will occasionally settle for being on a chest, the bumpier the better, but you have been acting remarkably marsupial during this last month. You spurn your ležalnik. If we had to choose a theme for this month’s progress, it would be “two steps forward, one step back”. Another example: your sleeping seemed to be going so well. Not anymore. Your mother shuffles around like a creaking zombie. I have become increasingly able to sleep through anything, even your constant air raid sirens, which does not endear me to her.
There have been some real forward moves on your part, though: you took your first overnight trip, which involved 2,300 km in the car, four countries, a dozen relatives, two religious ceremonies, and thousands of endless family meals blending one into the other. You handled all of this with hardly a squawk, except for that bit about the holy water burning your forehead like battery acid. You were a perfect travelling baby.
Also: you have learned this month that mother’s milk is not the only food on offer here. Sure, there had been a little formula and reisflocken in your diet before, but that is nothing compared to the menu that has opened up before you like amber waves of buckwheat: first came the mashed banana, apple sauce kind of stuff, but then you began branching out: flavors like pear, strawberry, boiled carrot, vegetable risotto (with cheddar cheese!). You have even grasped, ahem, the idea that you will one day be able to feed yourself: our trip to Germany saw you wrap your chubby tiny fist around a kinder kek, which you quickly converted into a kind of cement by combining it with your avid drool. Sure, you jabbed the biscuit into your eye a few times en route to actually feeding yourself, but you got the concept immediately even if hand-mouth coordination were lacking. And it seems that you have an intuitive grasp of the infinite variety of edible things that await you like some vast undiscovered country; when your mother and I sat down to a plate of stinky blue-veined cheeses and garlic-laced klobasa on Sunday, you couldn’t tear your envious gaze away from our hands and mouths and what passed between them. That said, you seem especially keen on the apple and carrot duo. Not surprising since that is practically all your mother ate while she was pregnant, chomping them down like a sleek shiny pony. By my reckoning your body mass is around 45% carrot-and-apple anyway.
Not coincidentally, the contents of your diaper have been changing, too. Just when we had gotten used to the whole-grain mustard theme, you suddenly switch to intermittently packing the diap’ with these GORILLA DUMPS. Your mother takes an unwholesome interest in the smells and textures which I have to say is infectious. But enough about this.
Coupled with the abilty you’ve shown to shove real, actual foods into your own mouth is your growing coordination in general, but more important, it seems, is your abilty to understand its value: you want to be able to do things for yourself. You already seem to understand that you will be able to do this: move under your own power, and with that, essentially do anything. This terrifies us, especially when considered with your discovery of how to create concrete using only teething biscuits and spit.
One of the most profound changes in our relationship with you came about just a few days ago. Something about the shape of your face, the texture of your hair, the alarming rate at which you are changing every day, something, gave me a jolt that was quite alarming, a mixture of deep joy, awesome responsibility, and disbelief clashing with the obvious: you are here to stay. You are not just a fascinating little short-term baby project for us. You are our son, and with luck and grace we will have you with us for the rest of our entire lives. We knew this intellectually before, of course, but to feel the truth of this with the brush of my hand over your head, it was, like you are becoming, HEAVY. Realizing this we wonder sometimes why our hearts don’t explode with happiness like incendiary pomegranates.
