I’m sitting here with you on my lap as you suckle away at your chubby little hands. They’re just about your favorite thing in the world. You stare at them, suck them, fold them, flail them… I sometimes get that Sweeny Todd song stuck in my head where he sings to his shaving knives and calls them his friends whenever I watch you in your “hand sucking euphoria” stage….I’m weird like that though.

You are 1/3 of the way through your first year of life…we are out of that “fourth trimester” as some call it and into full blown babyhood. Sometimes when I get sad, or too tired to really think straight, I get sad thinking this may have been my last real newborn parent experience…I have no clue if it really is or not, but as I watch you begin to outgrow your 0-3 month clothes, I get a little misty as I try and force you to stay into them a little longer…your toes are a bit curled…but, TINY BABY CLOTHES FTW. Just thinking back to when you first popped out all teeny and not fitting into any of them and now here you are busting outta them and I’m pretty sure you’ll be in 3-6 for all of 5 days  before you outgrow those too….its fleeting this baby thing.

YET IT SEEMS SO SLOW BECAUSE YOU STILL REFUSE TO SLEEP WELL….ZZZZZZZZZZ….

Anywhoooo, back to the loving place.

You smile at us. You giggle. You sing. You chat. You started doing that throat bubbly chat thing your brother used to do. You refuse to take bottles. You love to look at yourself in the mirror….so much so that I’m a bit concerned about what this means for us come teenage years. You STILL hate car seats. You can play with rattles now and grab onto the dangly toys on the play mat. You roll over from tummy and back nooooo problem and with just a bit more effort you got that back to tummy thing pretty soon. You are really drooly and spit uppy…I spend half my day changing you outta drenched onesies that you’ve only had on for like 10 minutes. You find spit up to be your favorite smell…thats the only explanation I can come up with for why you still enjoy plastering the stench all over me day after day. Sometimes, I walk around like normal, getting wiffs of it but not knowing where it is and then I get a glimpse of my back in the mirror and HELLO, FOUND THE SOURCE (sick right? yea…I know).

YOU ARE SO CUTE IT MAKES ME WANNA HAVE 10 MORE JUST LIKE YOU. But then we flash forward to 3:36am when you’ve been up 2 times already just to say “HI MOM” and I quickly lose those feelings for another day.

For valentines day, I would like the gift of bottle eating and sleeping so mama can ya know….have a life? :). Kisses sweet Missy E.