I won the baby lottery.
If babies could be bought at stores, Hutch would be the deluxe model, custom-made to fit perfectly into our lives. He cries, I’m not going to lie and say he doesn’t, but he has conveniently fine-tuned his cries so that I can usually tell what it is he’s crying about. He has one cry for being hungry, one cry for being tired, and one cry for being scared, so that whenever he does cry I can usually identify and solve his problems within a minute or two. He travels like a pro; he takes a soother like he was born to suck, and for a while there he only pooped about once a week. (That number has since increased to once daily, but how can I fault him for getting his digestive system up to par?) And the icing on the baby cake? Last night he slept for 8 hours straight. 8 HOURS STRAIGHT.
He is generous with his grins, and they are infectious. We have smiling contests all the time; he wins more often than not. His toothless grin and sparkly eyes are more than I can handle sometimes, in a good way.
At three months old he’s getting pretty good at holding up his head—still not quite enough to sit up the Bumbo on his own, but enough now to hang out in the ErgoBaby carrier and actually like it. He loves—LOVES—his baths, except for when he has to get out, but who can blame him? That’s always the worst part of bathing and he’s just a baby—he doesn’t know yet that sometimes you have to do the hard things in life like get out of the warm water.
He doesn’t care for tummy time, and I hate to hear him sound uncomfortable so I don’t make him do it very much. I worry I might be stunting his development. But then again I worry about everything. I just read him extra stories to make up for it.
He has discovered his hands. Sometimes I catch him arm outstretched, just staring at his hand like he can’t quite believe it’s part of him. It’s funny: I have a vivid memory of discovering my own self-awareness while looking at my hand as a child. It was very zen, almost an out-of-body experience. I’m sure it must be strange for him, having all these flailing appendages he wants so desperately to control but can’t quite manage to. Every now and then he works his hands up to his mouth and sucks violently on his knuckles, sometimes even on his thumb, but the joy is short-lived before he jerks them away almost certainly against his will.
He thinks blowing raspberries is the funniest noise ever. He doesn’t laugh quite yet, but he grins and gasps and you can just tell he thinks it’s hilarious.
He sucks on his bottom lip like it’s going out of style. His facial expressions range from suspicious to wondrous to exuberant and everything in between. Sometimes when he’s laying down he lifts his legs up and touches his toes together like he’s devising some crafty plan to take over the world, monkey-style.
He babbles all the time, and sometimes if the conditions are just right—he has to be tired and swaddled and full of milk and sucking on a soother—he will talk back directly to me if I talk to him. We have full conversations even.
He watches my every move. When he’s sitting in his little baby chair while I make dinner in the kitchen, I feel his eyes on me. He follows me around the room. I am aware now more than ever that I need to be on my best behaviour.
How can I express the level of love I feel for this sweet boy? It’s difficult to convey. Every day I get to hold him, nuzzle him, cuddle his sweet cheeks, and I feel like I’m in a dream.
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