Dear Moss (six weeks)

Dear Moss,
You've outgrown your lemons.  The only outfit we owned that was small enough to fit you those first few days, your going-home lemons can barely be zipped up past your round milky belly.

Zipped up, it's too tight on your legs and pulls on them uncomfortably.

At your 1 month check-up you were 9 pounds and 13 ounces and 20.5 inches long, and goodness knows how much more you've grown even since then.

I cannot believe you have been here with us for 6 entire weeks!

Each week has felt like its own whole year, but also the chunk of time all together has felt like a quick little hop and a jump.  (Seconds pass slowly, and years go flying by...)

Annie told me that pretty soon, I won't be able to remember what life was like before you.  That didn't make sense to me 4 weeks ago, but it's starting to ring true.  It would be kind of a cliche to say that it feels like my whole life has been leading up to you, so I won't.  Plus that's not quite what it's like for me anyway.  It's more like, when I think back to when I was a kid imagining what it would be like to have my own kids, I was imagining you -- like it makes total sense that you're here now because it was only ever going to be you.

I'm sure that feeling is completely filtered through my present-colored glasses, but that's how it seems.

You're a really good night sleeper, and have been for about 3 weeks now.  You get very sleepy between 8pm and 10pm, and are not ready to be fully alert again until at least 8am.  Sure, you wake up between 3 and 5 times to eat during that period, but you're very gentle and polite when you ask for food, so it doesn't bother me.

You love to be rocked and swayed to sleep at exactly 100 bpm.  Any slower and you squinch up your little face into a pout and whimper (which will, incidentally, get you anything you ever want in the near future, so it's good you can't read yet).  Any faster and you throw your arms into the air, screech, and scratch at your face.  100 bpm it is.  That's also exactly how fast the level 6 setting on your fancy-pants swing from Great Gma Peg goes, so thank the heavens for that when my blood sugar tanks and I have to go cook something, or I have to pee or shower, or any of those other pesky non-Moss-holding activities I seem to like to do every now and again for some inane reason.

Daddy likes to sing songs to you by replacing strategic lyrics with "Moss".  "Stairmoss to Heaven" is the least sensical so far (There's a Moss who is sure all that glitters is moss, and he's buying a stairmoss to moss moss), and the funniest is "Why Does The Moss Shine" (The Moss is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace)...

Your lips get all puffy when you sleep, which is adorable.

Other adorable things you do:

• Sometimes in the middle of a deep warm sleep, your brows furrow, you grin wide, and you squeak and beep like a little mouse.  You've done this since the day you were born.  Seeing and hearing this fixes every bad mood known to humankind.
• You snort and grunt and root and snarf like a little piggy when you're hungry.  I'm sure it doesn't help your reflux issues to swallow so much air all the time (see "puke volcanoes", below), but I'll happily change your shirt 24 times per day if that's the price for being able to say "Mommy's little piggy" through hysterical giggles every day.
• Your favorite place to sleep is curled up like a little turtle on our chests.  I will remember this feeling forever and always.  Someone should figure out how to bottle this feeling so I can consume it when you're 16 and need a reminder of why I didn't ding-dong-dash your cute little self in a Moses basket 16 years earlier.
• You're starting to smile back at us, but it's fleeting, and conditions have to be perfect.  I cannot *wait* until this is something that happens so frequently I have to remember not to take it for granted. 
• You love you Moby wraps as much as I do.  Three cheers for hours-long hugging sessions!
• You really like tummy time, which is nice because it helps you work out lots of burps.  You like to flex your toes and stiffen your legs to do the most adorable wee little baby push-ups.

There are also a number of things you like to do that try our patience, but are still kind of adorable:

• Your favorite place to poop is the changing table.  It's hilarious the first time you soil your brand new clean diaper just as the last onesie snap is snapped, but increasingly less amusing each subsequent time (your record is 4, though I'm guessing you're already cross-training so you can exceed that).
• Your puke volcanoes are super gross and make me have to do a *lot* of laundry.  I was skeptical that our family laundry volume would increase appreciably until you were somewhat larger, since your outfits are one-tenth the size of mine.  But when you puke 10 times on 10 different outfits in 10 hours, well that adds up.  You should hurry up and figure out how your esophagus works, Little One.
• You seem to get inconsolably crabby in the evenings.  We figured out that it's a combination of overstimulation and gas, and that a warm bath makes everything better.  Lucky for you, your puke volcanoes necessitate a daily bath anyway.  
• Holding you makes it very difficult to knit and type, which are the two things that used to occupy about 80% of my waking hours.  Sometimes if I'm lucky you'll be happy sleeping on my legs or beside me snuggled up, but it's always such a crapshoot to put you down and often I'm not willing to risk it.  It should be win-win to put you to sleep in the Moby so I can do these things, but you vastly prefer me to be up and about when you're strapped in to it, and me sitting still tends to wake you for some reason.  I guess I should learn how to walk-knit.

Current nicknames:  Mossy, The Moss, Sweet the Moss, Sweet Moss Peat Moss, Swiss Moss (i.e. sweet chocolaty Swiss Moss with marshmossles (mossmallows?)), Mousy Mossy, Green Bean, Little One, Hufflegrunts.

Stuff you can do that's new:  hold your own head up to look around while being held upright; reach for toys; track objects and faces with your eyes; move your arms around without getting scared every time; suck your thumb.

We're going to Unkie Adam's wedding this week, and you're going to meet so so so many important people.  I'll understand if you don't remember everyone's name at first, it's a lot to take in.  

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox