Month 5

Dear Corbin,

You are five months old today. Every day you are a little bit different. A little bit better at reaching for things. A little bit better at sitting up. A little bit better at eating delicious rice cereal mush. A little bit better at twisting yourself all around while we’re trying to put a clean diaper on you.

You are selective with your smiles these days. We get them when you wake up in the morning, or from your naps, or when we come home from work. But you rarely smile at strangers right now, and the afternoon that we tried to take family pictures, you didn’t smile at all. In fact, any time you see the camera, you instantly become Mr Solemn Face.

We did manage to find you the perfect toy for you right now. We call it your stander bouncer. You sit in a little round chair and there is a bouncy “floor” under your feet, so you feel like you’re standing up. You love the stander bouncer. It might be the best $25 I ever spent on craigslist. You love to stand in it and reach out for the dogs when they walk by. You love to stand in it and watch the fish in the fish tank.

You like to watch anything, really. You open your eyes wide and stare and stare and stare. If we hold you facing over our shoulders, it’s only a few minutes before you’re twisting yourself around. You turn in our direction when you hear our voices, and you look to see where other noises are coming from. You want to see everything, and its fun to watch you watching things.

It’s also fun to watch you do yoga poses. You’ve mastered up-dog, and obviously you’re a natural at happy baby pose. I’ve even seen you do a locust pose. So we’ll have to see which you prefer: going to kung fu with your dad, or going to yoga with your mom. Although if your energy level is anything like I’ve seen in other little boys, you’d better do both, several times a week.

You’ve had some of your fussiest days this month, and I think it’s because you’re starting to have some teething pain. We’re trying to work out some strategies for helping you sleep more, and it seems to be helped by judicious doses of acetaminophen. I’m sure that later we’ll have to switch to something stronger, like whiskey, but this is working for now.

On the surface, it seems like this was an uneventful month. We didn’t travel anywhere, and we didn’t have anyone visiting. We went to work and did the laundry and did yard work and it would be easy to think it was all very tedious. But then I watch you exploring your toys or making a mess out of learning to eat cereal, and tedious is the word that’s farthest from my mind.

Love,

Mom

We did manage to have our annual 4th of July party, during which you went to sleep at 8:30pm and slept all the way through the usual WWIII assault launched by the neighbors across the street. I don't know which was more amazing: you sleeping through it, or them not getting arrested (again).