Housekeeping at Four Months

Dear Milo:
In few days you will be four months old. It's hard to believe that you are the same little blob we brought home from the hospital in November - every day you're more and more like a person. I folded up your newborn-sized clothing and put it into storage the other day, and I have to say I do not feel one iota of nostalgia for your first three months. Not one smidgen. To me those clothes say exhaustion, breastfeeding, endless feedings, and screaming triggered by nothing. Thank God we are on to month four.

That said, all the books indicate that at four months you should start sleeping through the night, so I am eagerly looking forward to Thursday night, when you will officially be four months old and, as such, I can look to a whole night of uninterrupted sleep. If you wake up, as you usually do, at 1AM, I will simply point you to the page in What To Expect The First Year that explains how you should be sleeping, and then I will go back to sleep and let you mull over your progress thus far.

I'm also looking forward to the day when you will no longer have an irrational fear of hats, but the books don't indicate when that might be.

At four months you love standing and you love experimenting with weird noises. You also like to smile and sometimes you even laugh a little which is one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. I understand that yesterday you projectile spat-up nearly two ounces of formula onto your father's head. I also understand that this wasn't really your fault, since he was holding you upside down shortly after feeding you. And I also understand that you thought the whole thing was pretty damn funny, which shows that your sense of humor is developing nicely.

Keep up the good work.
Love,
Mommy

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Dear Part of My Brain Responsible for Generating Sentences,
I really, really appreciate you. Thank you for writing a whole book! And thank you for continuing to come up with lots of ideas. Only... could we perhaps not make all the ideas come at three o'clock in the morning? I mean, nine AM is a perfectly respectable time to have ideas too, no? Just a suggestion.

Best wishes,
Part of My Brain Responsible for Melatonin Production

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Dear Oscar,
I know these last few months have been hard on you. You must be wondering why we brought home a cat that does nothing but cry, and why we needed another cat in the first place, and when that cat will change it's own stinky diapers. I could explain that Milo isn't a cat, but really he isn't all that different, so let's just pretend for the moment that he is. I promise that in just a few more months Milo is going to turn into your best buddy. He's going to pet you and chanse you and he might even give you way more attention than you ever wanted and you might have to resort to hiding in the closet the way you did for the first month after we brought him home. I'm sorry I don't play with you as much as I used to, but quite frankly I just don't get as much time to do anything anymore.

Hang in there,
The Person Who Feeds You

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Dear Body,
Okay, I get the message. We do things slowly around here. Except for growing fingernails. That we seem to do at a furious pace. But what else could explain the fact that it took Ms. Cervix a full 36 hours to move a mere ten centimeters, or that at four months post partum I am just now fitting back into my largest clothes? That said, I do appreciate you giving me my waist back, even though it appears to be in a different place than it was last year. I'll make a deal with you: I'll continue to eat right and get exercise and you be bathing-suit ready by the time I go to L.A. in May. So we can look cute in that aqua bikini we both love so much.

Keep it real.
H