Dear Moss: Six Months

Dear Moss,
You and I met 183 days ago.  Together but separately, we were both doing a lot of hard work so we could say hello.  Since that day you've become your own exuberant person.  Since that day you've opened your eyes wide and shiny, every morning a little happier to be.  Since that day you've almost tripled your weight: from 5 pounds and 15 ounces to 17 pounds and 1 ounce.  Since that day you've learned to babble, roll over, self-propel, play with toys, hold books, eat food, drink water, pet your dogs, hold yoga poses (happy baby and cobra are your faves), focus your eyes, hold your attention, soothe many of your own anxieties, and communicate surprisingly effectively.  Since that day you've grown your hair out one whole inch.  And tomorrow you'll be closer to your first birthday than to that summer day we worked so hard.

You made it to 6 months of breastfeeding!  The only non-breastmilk things you consumed during your first 25 weeks earthside were 2 rotavirus vaccines, several dozen vials of Cocyntal, a lick of cucumber, and a dozen or so sips of filtered water.  I'm *so* proud of us for this.  You started eating some fun solid foods around week 25 instead of waiting until right on your 6 month birthday or after because you showed every single sign of being ready.  As of today you've tried tastes of avocado, green bean, lettuce, egg yolk, raspberry, broccoli, peas, cauliflower, and red bell pepper, and if your voracious chompings and suckings and gummings and cries-when-dropped are any sort of sign, you love them all.  We'll see if that sticks, but as of now you're not a picky eater at all.

You love the baby in the mirror.  We did the are-you-smarter-than-a-gibbon rouge test: we put a dot of white toothpaste on your forehead and brought you to the mirror.  Turns out you're happily oblivious to the toothpaste on your head, so it appears that you believe the mirror contains several highly amusing playmates who seem to look very familiar but you can't put your finger on it.  I must remember to get a picture of you and that fun mirror baby having one of your lengthy philosophical conversations.  Your dad has kindly augmented the mirror for our continued amusement:

You have such a frolicsome personality.  I love how your eyes light up when you think something is funny, or when you first see that I'm awake in the morning, or when you check to see that I'm still around and I wave at you from across the room.  I can see your smile all the way back on your scalp.  You really feel your oats, happily playing on the rug with your toys and dogs for many an hour each day.  Sometimes you get frustrated because you really want to do something you can't quite do yet, or you're cranky and growth spurt-y, or you just need a change of pace, but 92% of the time you have a huge loony grin slapped on your face.

You played your first trick on me -- we were playing a pattern game where I was bending and straightening your leg along with you.  You would stiffen your leg, then relax it slightly so I would know when to bend it.  Eventually we established a lilting sort of rhythm with it, bend-ing, straight-en, bend-ing, straight-en, bend-ing, straight-en.  And THEN.  Oh and then.  I'd say around the 20th go-round -- when it was time to switch from straight-en to bend-ing -- we got to straight-en and you raised your eyebrows and opened your mouth into an O shape, and then when it was time for bend-ing you didn't relax your leg you kept it stiff instead and then you just exploded with laughter.

You are a water bug baby, you love all faucets and sprayers and hoses and anything with water coming out.  You close your little hands around the stream and pull them back to you and open them to look at what you have and are so confused and disappointed when there's nothing there.  But you love them anyway.  I can't wait to take you to see your first mountain stream, your first water park, your first fountain.  I was reading that many babies go through a phase around your age where they develop a fear of the bathtub -- I would be so surprised if you went through this phase.

You like to grab my mouth while I'm talking to you.  It makes you giggle to feel my jaw move up and down and to feel my teeth.

You fell asleep completely on your own for the first time in your entire life this month.  You've always needed help, either with nursing, rocking, or being wrapped.  But one night we were all hanging out in the bedroom, and you were playing happily on your back.  I could tell you were getting sleepy because your eyes were getting puffy and red and you were rubbing your face with your hands.  I started to hunker down for the 15-30 minute process that is helping you go to sleep, but something seemed different this one time, so I watched for a minute instead.  Instead of getting more violent and flaily, your face rubs were getting more gentle and soporific.  Your leaden eyelids started to sink towards your nose, and your movements became slower and slower.  I actually started taping it because I couldn't believe it was happening.  Usually the sensation of falling asleep is not a pleasant one for you, but just this one time, you made it there on your own.  Got me all verkelmpt, for sure.  This has definitely not happened again yet, but it was a bittersweet glimpse of the future when you won't need my help for the simple stuff.

You *love* naked time.  Sometimes you cry when it's time to put your diaper back on, but you're so good-natured you've usually forgotten why you're crying by the time the last snap is snapped.

You went for your first ride in the jogging stroller, and you're a natural.  I think you like it for the same reasons you like being in the moving car -- fun things to look at flying past your field of vision plus the sensation of moving quickly.

Your taste in books has improved, by which I mean you've curbed your compulsion to eat them and started actually looking at them.  You turn the pages and scratch at the pictures, and sometimes when you're done reading you'll clutch the book for a long time without wanting me to take it away.  I'm okay with that.

You roll around the floor like some sort of crazed rolling little hedgehog and you're thisclose to figuring out some sort of scoot- or crawl-like movement.  Dad swears he saw you do downward dog the other day, but I missed it so I am skeptical.  I did just now see you roll onto your tummy, fold your feet a little, and then press the bottoms of your toes onto the floor.  You moved about 0.75 inches forward, but I don't think you noticed.  One day soon you're going to notice.  You're deftly exploiting the rolling-for-moving concept, but I can see it irks you that you can only move left and right, when you clearly want to go straight.  One day you rolled yourself up in the blanket completely and decided that baby burrito was HILARIOUS and you didn't want to come out.

You figured out how to clap your hands, but in all your innovative cleverness you prefer to do this vertically instead of horizontally.

You like to scratch things to find out what texture they are.  I watch you roll onto your tummy and scratch the rug, then roll onto your back and scratch the wood floor, then roll onto your tummy and scratch your shirt, then roll onto your back and scratch Aoro's paw, then roll onto your tummy and scratch the rocker on the chair.  Once you started eating big boy food, you noticed an intriguing property of food -- you can bang it onto the table or squish it in your hand and it changes texture slightly.  You've generalized this to the rest of your world and embarked on a very large-scale experiment where you bang everything you own onto the ground and into every other thing you own to see if anything changes texture after that.

You're not using words in expectedly contingent ways yet, but you certainly have a vocabulary:  Hi, dad, dada, yeah, *raspberry tongue*, oowah, gur, *cough noise*, *guttural barbaric yalp*, rah, eh, wah, (and more).  Your first babble syllables were Hi Dada, which continues to be a huge hit.

You like to put your hand into your mouth and make your babbling noises around it.  I think it's helping you learn your bilabial consonants, which would be oh so nice if it leads you to the addition of Hi Mom to your lexicon.

You are a baby, but somehow not a baby anymore.  You look very different this month compared to even just a few weeks ago -- quite kid-like, person-like even.  It is a heavy, shining love I have for you, Moss.  You make the stars sing and the moon laugh.

A-guac-alypse Now

Sorry for the late post, Youtube was being strange for me yesterday.  Moss has been learning about food this week, and the photo opportunities are RIFE.  Around Xmas time he was allowed a few licks of things, just to learn about flavor: cucumber, apple, and carrot.  He reacted somewhere between neutrally and positively to the taste, but then a puke-o-rama ensued, so we delayed for another couple of weeks.  This week was good, no post-licking vomit festivals.  Enter the avocado.

The what to the WHAT now?

Oh! It's messy and squishy and I can touch it and rub it into my face and hair and everything around me?  Okay!!

Actually, I'm still not totally on board... 

...but it does provoke exploration, I'll give it that.

For someone whose batting average of "put everything into mouth" is 1.000, Moss sure did strike out on this one.  He did not immediately figure out that it was food, and once he did, it took him a moment to decide if the concept was worth pursuing.

  (sorry for the video auto focus, hope it doesn't make you seasick)

But then he picked up a giant piece and figured it out.  

And now the rest of the post will be a very large number of photographs of Moss maiming an avocado.  I can't decide which one is the cutest, so we are all subjected to all of them.

Mistah Avocado, he dead.

And then, because he did so very well, the next day Moss tried lettuce...

sadly for him he did not also sample our ridiculous cheeseburgers and fries...

...and then the day after that he tried a green bean.

Exhilarating.  And now we brush our teeth.

Close enough.

Moss the Menace

Soooooo, Moss can do this now.

Aaaaaand it's all over.  We need to babyproof yesterday.  Let me tell you how I know that.  This morning, I laid him down in the living room on a blanket on his back with several toys while I went to go get a toothbrush.  This is something I've been doing for many many mornings.  Set him down, walked to the bathroom, grabbed the toothbrush, squeezed the toothpaste, put the toothbrush in my mouth, walked back to the living room, aaaaaaand SCENE:

10 feet in 21 seconds, GAH

Not my finest parenting moment.  Also bad is the part where instead of immediately taking the cord away from him, I said to myself, "Quick!  Take a picture for the internet!"

Many thanks!

Moss fans!  You have sent us delightful presents.  We have managed to thank many of the givers of these presents, but many others have not yet been properly acknowledged.  These presents arrived varying degrees of "a long time ago" and we didn't thank you yet, and that is crappy.  Here's the other crappy thing: a few things were sent in July or early August and were mushglopped together in the hazy newborn-addled fog of my brain such that I'm not totally sure about the origin of a few of these things.  I *think* I've sorted it out in this post, but if I've gotten it wrong, please forgive me -- my priority hierarchy didn't even include showering that month, and I didn't manage to do a good job of tracking what came from where.  We are very grateful for everything we've received, and we use everything we've received A LOT.  So thank you -- this post is dedicated to you, in honor of your thoughtfulness and in apologies for our forgetfulness.  And to those whom I've doubly forgotten by not even remembering in this post but still have not thanked for something, well, you should just bop me on the head.

Let's start out small with Gramimi -- I've only let this one slide since Xmas morning, and since it's only now the 12th day of Xmas, I'm actually still maybe within an acceptable range of thank you noting.  So thank you -- Moss loves these.

They have an interesting rubbery texture and he sits there and scratches each one with his fingernails, which keeps him busy for upwards of 10 minutes at a clip.  He also enjoys eating them like apples.  An all around winner.

While we're at it, Unkie Adam and Aunt Chelsea sent the killing-me-with-cuteness outfit featured above.  THANK YOU.  My heart grows three sizes every time I glance in his direction when he's wearing this.  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Er. 

Mer.

Gerd.

And now on to some lovely gifts for which the passage of time is a little more shameful.  Moss's Auntie B thought of him upon two separate occasions and for this Moss has to show a jaunty little red tee-shirt...

...and some quite weather-appropriate little sandals...

...which don't quite fit yet but which Moss wants to eat...

much

more

than

anything

The blanket is also from Auntie B in spirit, as she crafted it for me 30 whole years ago.  Thank you!!

Greats Pete and Patti sent a food-related gift package of amazingness, which is only now coming in handy this week as Moss can finally sit up pretty well and will start eating some solids, so really, my tardy thank you note is STRATEGIC...  ahem.  Thank you -- this seat is awesome and is totally going to be our regular high chair.  So compact and not trip-over-able!

Thematically appropriate outerwear courtesy of Gigi

My wonderful Mama remembered that the Burrs sent the precious tiger-themed outfits, but I don't even remember the day we received them.  :(  What I *do* know is that we *LOVE* these and Moss wears them ALL THE TIME.  Thank you muchly!  We reach for them a lot -- spontaneous photographic evidence abounds:

9/7/13 - The day of many biting flies -- the long sleeves came in super handy

10/1/13 - Hanging out with dad, just learned how to smile on cue

With matching diaper cover of course...

10/23/13 - Just chillin'

11/29/13 - Meeting Grandpa Trofatter for the first time

12/18/13 - Being the cutest baby in all the land

12/29/13 - Just hanging out with Dad again

Last Friday - Looking downright cherubic

The Montoyas sent us *adorable* cloth pads with hand-sewn decorations of jungle animals and frogs and sports thingies and we LOVE THEM.  There aren't any pictures with them just lying around because they are *constantly* in the washing machine because we use them every single day as burp cloths.  Not kidding, every day, no joke.  They serve a grungy but noble purpose.  <3  Thank you.

The Hursts sent us this stupendous doggy blanket, which we use a ton.  It has a flannely side and a satiny side, depending on whether Mr. Moss is in a flannely or satiny mood.  He likes to eat them both, but variety is a wondrous thing.  Thank you!

The Glasmanns sent the only other non-onesie tee-shirt Moss owns (besides the Auntie B Mike Mulligan one) along with some matching shorts and a hat.  This is another one we reach for a lot, (although he just now fits into it) because iguanas are super cute, and this outfit is unlike anything else he has (in a really good way).  Very cool.  Thank you!

11/27/13

12/21/13

The Georgia Roushes sent a couple of very *very* soft, sweet, powder blue onesies with lions.  We love these for jammies because they are soft and quite warm but also breathable and super soft (and they're SOFT), so there aren't a ton of pictures, but trust me, these are heavily in the rotation.  Thank you a ton.  :)

The cute blanket again too!  Double thanks!

And finally, another item we use as jammies exclusively when nights are warm is a beautiful wearable muslin blanket.  This came from Kristi, who at that time had a 4 month old tiny one herself (not to mention two others under 8 *and* a teenager) and she *still* managed to send us a gift, and yet we couldn't even get it together enough to write a thank you note.  Great.  Well thank you so so so much, because this thing is fantastic.

Again, I'm very sorry if I mixed anyone up, and I'm very very sorry this comes so late, and I'm very very very sorry if you still haven't been thanked for something you sent Mr. Moss.  There is no doubt that everything sent has been greatly appreciated, but there is a doubt as to my ability to function as a reasonably courteous human being.