What kind of mother am I? A painfully busy one, which is why it’s September 13, and Paisley hit four months like three weeks ago or something. I honestly wrote this on Aug. 26, with every intention of publishing on Aug. 27, but alas, my dumb ‘ole life went and got in the way. I could of course already fill volumes with the amazing things she’s done since then… but you’ll just have to wait until Sept. 27… or October 13!

I seriously don’t even know where the time has gone. We’re on the cusp of fall, you’re four-months old and I can’t believe you’re not so tiny any more. You are a full-fledged baby. I love watching your personality blossom. You have strong opinions about things and when you aren’t getting the attention you need you’ll make this playful songbird sound like “Hey guys, I’m cute and I’m over here.”

Verbally you have really grown. You “talk” and coo all the time, babbling on and on telling us what I know are very grand stories. This is typically how we find you in the morning. I’m so glad you don’t wake up screaming and crying; you now spend 30 minutes or so singing and cooing to yourself in bed. And when we finally arrive to collect you, you are literally bursting with smiles. Morning is your best time of the day. You are happy, engaged, vocal and very playful.

You are a playful, active little thing. The more one-on-one attention you can get, the better for you (not always for us!). Your arms and legs never stop moving. Ever. You’ve discovered your hands are much more than a sucking toy, although they maintain that day job (fists balled up shoved in your mouth ALL the time), but you have discovered you can hold things, grab toys, reach for our faces, and you’ve even successfully held your bottle a few times. You found that your feet fit right inside your mouth and you’ve always got a handful of foot and toes and occasionally take a bite.

Your favorite toy is the crunchy butterfly toy. You l-o-v-e this thing. I have no idea where it even came from. We place it on the tray on your exersaucer and you always navigate to it and just coo with delight and start fidgeting with her. The exersaucer is so great for you. You can’t get enough standing, whether in that alone or while someone is holding you. You spin around hitting each of the little centers and playing with the toys we leave around for you. You’ve even stood on your own for about 45 seconds!

Not sure if we’re raising a little narcissist or not but you absolutely love that baby in the mirror! In a way you don’t do for real live humans, when you catch your reflection you get ten kinds of excited. It’s actually very cute.

You still still love bath time. You’re taking more by yourself, learning to splash in the water, and you rarely fuss during the exit. We still take baths with you, and I know it’s something we both enjoy doing. It’s just a great bonding time. You completely zen out like an old lady after a hard day. The only thing you’re missing is a glass of wine and a trashy celebrity rag. You really love when we turn on the jets.

We got to take you to Raz’s and Dave’s wedding last weekend and show you off. It was so much fun catching up with so many friends in the Baha’i community, not to mention getting you all dolled up. Second behind the bride of course, you were the prettiest girl there!

This month we introduced you to solid foods, having a tablespoon of rice cereal after your evening bottle. In a word, you hate it. You hate us for making you eat it. You hate the world for growing it. On a scale of love it to hate it, you wish we would die. Your daddy captured the moment perfectly during your very first feeding. You gagged and choked and cried and I laughed harder than was probably appropriate.

I’ve decided that you are the one-hit-wonder of baby milestones. You’ve laughed. Once. You’ve rolled over. Once. You do these amazing things and then you’re like, OK, what’s next? Breaks my heart a bit because I get so excited to see you do more of it. Your first laugh was while Grandma Lori was prepping you for a bath. She was tickling you and you started giggling. Real giggles and I swear I stopped dead in my tracks and the feeling inside was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I was so overjoyed that it hurt. Quite possibly the best sound I’ve ever heard.

Next of course to the one you make first thing in the morning.

You get better and better every single day. I’m excited to see your hair growing and how you continue to just astound us.

I love you tiny bits!

Mama

Dear Paisley,

Three months already?! Stop it! What a conundrum I find myself in with you. I want nothing more than to keep you this size (like those unfortunate cats in the jars) so that you’ll never grow and you’ll always be this tiny and sweet; and yet, each day you grow and develop and I become even more enamored by you.

I would love nothing more than right now to squish and kiss your little face and tell you how amazing you’ve made the last three months of my life, but I can’t. I’m in New York. And you’re at home in Wichita. Yes, I had to take my first work trip back to New York since I was about 14 weeks pregnant with you. I’ve known for two months this trip was coming and thought it would be tough, but had no idea how hard it would be to walk out those doors yesterday morning. I took a xanex for the first time in my life if that’s any indication. I physically couldn’t make myself set you down. But I got on the plane, and I’ve been here for two of the six days and I’m doing alright. Everytime I look at a picture of you my heart swells, but I know it’s not anything that’s going to kill or maim either of us so I just keep taking deep breaths and missing you more than I’ve ever missed anyone or anything in my life. I’m finding a lot of relief in the fact that your AMAZING Oma is staying with you this week and that you get to spend every evening with your AMAZING daddy!!

You and I had our first video chat last night and I swear you knew it was me, if Shelton said so. You just came to life and cooed, smiled and blew raspberries while you watched the screen intently.

Aside from the sappy missing you stuff, it’s been a pretty fun month with you!

One night we had put you down for an evening nap in our bed. To our surprise you actually let us enjoy an uninterrupted meal, which was doubly nice because I’d made my first roasted whole chicken and man was it amazing! We peeked in at you afterward to see that you were lying wide awake, in yoga’s “happy baby” pose, just looking around. We both army-crawled into the room so you wouldn’t notice us and turned on the fan, which you love to watch to such an indescribable degree. Then we sat on the floor and watched you. THIS is why we canceled our cable – there’s nothing this good on TV. This my love is what you’ve done to us.

Earlier that morning you’d woken from a nap in our bed (sometimes it’s just easier to let you nap there) and we were once again peeking at you from the door when we realized you were awake. We literally wrestled, pushed, and fought our way to you trying to be the first one there. We arrived at the same time and both giggled and yelled “Hi Paisley!” and scared the living daylights out of you. You just burst in to tears. You were not as excited to see us as we were you! But again, this is what you’ve done to us.

The new tricks up your little sleeves just make my heart swell. You started blowing raspberries, something I do all the time because you absolutely light up and love it. For weeks you’ve tried imitating, with nothing more than spit bubbles forming on your lips. One day while playing with Oma your lips rolled together. You did it! Now, you love doing it all the time, your little lips just roll and zip and you seem so proud of yourself.

You’ve also started to find your hands. You still suck on your fist, and now shove the entire thing in your mouth. Your thumbs seem to never open and when I manage to pry them back I find what amounts to the hand version of toe-jam-meets-belly-button-lint. It’s gross. It stinks, it’s sticky, and always some little black ball of hair, lint and dirt. You’ve started grabbing toys, you even reached out one day and grabbed some flowers in a vase.

How did you get to that vase? Because you can’t get enough standing. So I held you standing on the bar looking at a bright vase full of flowers, which you were entranced by, and you reached out and grabbed a pink daisy.

Your feet are also on your radar. You’ll kind of reach for them or watch them, but not too much interaction. Enough that we know that you know there’s another extension of your body to play with!

You still won’t poop, but we’re hoping to fix that. We’re trying some special low-iron formula. And as soon as we can get you on track, it’s time to try rice cereal. Solids! Already!

You’re exponentially becoming more curious about every little thing around you. Patterns or shirts with bold colors or type faces on them suck you in and you can’t get enough of them.

Kind of how I feel about you. I could stare for hours and hours and still not satisfy my fascination. You get better every single day. Only 90 days in, I want to freeze it in time, and yet, I can’t wait to see how your world will change in the next 90.

I love you Tiny Bits!
– Mama

Dear Paisley Joon-

I’ve never been good at math, and don’t pretend to be, so understand when I say I don’t understand how the time has added up to two months. I find it funny because we waited six years to even try to get pregnant, and then my pregnancy seemed to eek by every day, and then you got here and I can’t seem to make the time slow down.

We’re absolutely soaking you up and enjoying every second with you. Fast or slow, the time with you in it is so much better. It feels like you’ve always been here, not like some person came home with us one day and suddenly we’re trying to make it all work. Well, there’s a little bit of that (OK, a lot of that) going on; but it really feels like you’ve been here all along.

You change so much every single day, and since I can’t bottle each moment to reflect on later, I’m trying to just savor them instead.

You started smiling this month – a moment captured by your Aunt Heather. Daddy was holding you and your little face just opened up into the biggest smile. You then smiled for Grandpa Kerry, and then Papa Rudy. I waited anxiously for my turn, hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to singing “Baby Got Back” like Rachel on Friends (a show that will undoubtedly run on your generation’s Nick at Nite). Then, while changing your diaper one afternoon, I was blowing my tongue at you and you did it. I want to suck the smile right off of your face. It’s perfect and beautiful, and shows off your gummy mouth and makes your bright blue eyes shine. You now smile all day. It takes some coercion at times, but once we get you going it’s non stop.

With the smiles came the coos. It’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. It’s like you’re telling us these big grand stories. You’ll sit in your Bjorn bouncer, all four limbs kicking and squirming every which way, and start smiling and cooing like nothing could make you any happier. It’s pure magic!

The one time you need no coercion in smiling at all is when your daddy comes home from work. All he has to do is walk up to you and say “Hi Munchkin Joon” and you just spring to life. The smiles, the coos, you give him the works, as if you’re saying “Hey, you’re the daddy guy! You came back!”.

I know every month will be full of “major” milestones, each one more impressive than the last. But this month, we hit some big ones.

We took you on your first road trip to Oklahoma City to visit the Koskie family and a legion of friends. You were perfect… on the drive down. Once there, I think you were just out of sorts and there was a lot of running around that threw off your slight semblance of a schedule. Without my pump and often sitting in the middle of people’s living rooms or restaurants, we were forced to give you a lot of bottles and do less nursing. By the time we got home that weekend, my milk was gone. I nursed you for six weeks and I couldn’t be happier that I did. I wanted to go a little longer, but sometimes things just happen. You’ve taken to the exclusive formula feeding pretty well. No real issues – except that you spill it everywhere when you eat and we both smell like old broccoli by the end of the day.

We took some advice of friends and started putting rice cereal in your bottles. I should have trusted my gut and not done it because we’re now on a full week of you not pooping. You don’t feel well, I know your tummy has to hurt! So we do pear juice bottles, and sometimes Karo in your regular bottles to try to get things moving. But the traffic is pretty jammed… if ya know whaddeye mean.

You moved from the Pack n Play in our room to the crib in your room. The first night I was so nervous. There was a huge storm and the monitor in our room kept picking up the thunder claps, making it sound like the walls of your nursery were falling in around you. I think I got up every hour to check on you. When the thunder caused the monitor to buzz non-stop, I finally turned it off and just slept on the couch so I could be closer to hear you. It was a long night, but we both survived, and now you sleep in your own room every night.

You still love baths. I don’t know that we’ve given you one in the sink recently. Instead, you’ve been joining me. One night you weren’t feeling well and were super fussy so I took you in to the shower with me. You loved it. You curled up in your little monkey ball on my chest and let the warm water rush over you and you never flinched. Not a muscle moved, not a sound was made, you soaked it up. And I did that moment. It was the most perfect moment I’ve ever lived. You also take baths with me and do the same, just curl up and let me pour the water over you. I think you’ll be a little water baby for sure!

This week you had your eight-week appointment with Dr. H. Oh how I dreaded it, because you were getting a round of shots. Three total, and you shrieked the most god-awful sound. We both cried, but then it was over lickety split and I know we were both really pretty OK. You didn’t feel well the remainder of the day; very whiny, fever of 99.5, sleepy and cuddly. You weighed in at 9 pounds, 13 ounces and 21.75″, putting you in the mid-30%. Still my tinybits!

I went back to work this month and it has been quite a transition. I feel really fortunate to have a job that I absolutely love and the ability to keep you home with me during the day. It’s had its trying moments (the days you break schedule) but for the most part the day flows pretty easily. You either sit in your Bjorn chair with the mobile spinning in front of you, lie on your tummy mat, or sit at the dining room table next to me in your high chair. Or, you sleep.

This time in our lives right now is in such flux. The house is a disaster, your dad and I are always tired and we never seem to be able to see each other. The days of summer are supposed to be the longest, yet I feel like they’re shorter than ever. It’s all transition. But I’ll take it, because the alternative is a life that is perfectly planned, cleaned and organized and doesn’t have you in it. I’ve lived that life, and I can say with absolute certainty that this one is so much better.

I love you –

Mama