Month 6 or, Happy Half Birthday

Dear Miriam,

You are half a year old!  You are definitely crawling now, but it took you a while to figure out how to go forward.  You would go sideways or backwards, which meant that you would crawl in a circle backwards.  It was pretty funny.  You are pretty much sitting up on your own, too, although sometimes it looks more like you're kind of perching on one hip.  One day, I put you in the Bumbo chair with a bead maze next to you, thinking that would keep you happy for a while.  Then I heard a thud and a rattle and found you'd crawled out of the chair and fallen on the maze.  Guess that Bumbo recall really does make sense.

I don't know how it happened, but you've established your own bedtime routine.  I had been thinking that we would need to do a lot of work to get you on a good schedule, but all of a sudden you're in the bath around 7:15pm and asleep around 8pm.  You're still up a couple of times at night to nurse and get re-settled, so I think we might still need to do some sleep training around that.  But I'm really happy that your bedtime has become pretty regular.  Although, I did tell Dad the other night that unless we want you to grow up illiterate, we'd better start reading to you at bedtime, too.


Hurricane Miriam was a category 2 hurricane in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California.  It's too bad that you're not old enough for us to get real mileage out of the fact that there was a hurricane with your name on it at the same time you discovered that you could crawl over and chew on the cords for Dad's Playstation.

Aunt Cele (or Grandma Cele, as her grandkids call her) came over to visit us and some other friends.  She brought a rocking chair for your room, which is giant improvement over the folding chair that we had in there.  It's much, much nicer this way.  Now I just have to worry about my entire body falling asleep, instead of just my butt.

We've started you on some rice cereal last month, but then there was a whole news report that rice can be a source of arsenic.  Ugh.  So when we ran out, I wrote down "oatmeal cereal" on the grocery list and sent Dad off to the grocery store.  He came home with oatmeal and cereal.  Which made me laugh.  You're still getting the hang of eating, and I'm still trying to get you to like bananas.

And then, the reason I'm so late posting this for you, we all go sick.  Corbin got really sick, with bad fevers and infections in his nose and eyes.  Dad got the least sick, with just a day of feeling stuffy.  I had a day of fever in the middle of a week or so of stuffed up head and a very sore throat.  You are really stuffed up, which wouldn't be so bad, but you can't sleep unless you are mostly upright.  So one night you slept on me, which meant you slept, but I did not.  The last couple of nights, you've been sleeping in your bathtub, in your crib, so that you're sitting up instead of laying down.  It certainly looks odd, but it's been working.

I realized I haven't told you very much about how you act lately.  You're a happy baby, you smile at us and laugh with us.  Sometimes you're okay playing on your own for a little while, but mostly you want to be with us.  When I get home from work, any time I walk away from you, you start fussing.  It's not because you're hungry, you just want to hang out with me.  Right now your high chair is across the table from Dad's chair, and he thinks it's funny to get you laughing just when I'm trying to feed you.  And, oh boy, do you like being around Corbin.  You're already a menace to whatever he's playing with, because all you want to do is crawl over and play with him.  Yesterday he was crying when we put his eye drops in, and you watched for a minute and then started crying with him.  It was almost as cute as when I come in your room in the morning and you give me the first smile of the day.  That's a pretty good way to start my morning.

Love,
Mom


You still have blue eyes:

 What your room looked like before I hung the painting over your dresser:

Helping Dad fix some headphones:

3.7 or, Sad Tummy Blues

Dear Corbin,

We were having a lovely month, and then there was the vomiting.

We went to Madison for Labor Day weekend, and the Thornes and Spencers met us there for a visit.  We spent an afternoon playing on the playground at my old elementary school, and that evening having dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Lam's house.  The next day, we all went swimming at the hotel.  And by all, I mean people other than you and me.  I had forgotten my swimming suit (after reminding Dad to bring his) and you decided you didn't really want to go into the pool.  You really liked standing on the edge and shooting squirt guns at people.  It was fun watching you play with your cousin Charlotte, at the playground and at the house.  You managed to share your toys with only a few moments of disagreement.  I'm always happy when we can get you some cousin time, even when it's only for a short visit.

Your regular preschool classes started.  It doesn't seem to be totally smooth yet.  There are some kids who haven't quite settled into the groove yet, and you've had some frustrating moments with them.  I spoke with your teacher about it, and she had been encouraging you to play with some of the other students who are better behaved.  It's another month until parent conferences, so hopefully by then the class will have calmed down and become more enjoyable.

We had gotten back into a pretty good routine, but this week you got sick.  It's our first experience with you having a stomach bug, and all of us are a little traumatized.  It started Tuesday morning at 3am, which meant I didn't really get any sleep the rest of the night.  Dad cleaned up you and your crib while I nursed Miriam back to sleep.  Then I laid in your room on the twin bed.  You woke up every so often to be sick again, which was awful.  I came home early from work that afternoon, and we managed to get a good nap in during the late afternoon.  Then you felt better, and I let you eat way too much for dinner.  It didn't all stay down, but then you weren't sick the rest of the night, so we all actually got some sleep that night.

It's hard watching you be sick.  There isn't a lot that we can do for you, in terms of medication, and you're not able to really think logically about how to make yourself feel better.  So we end up just trying to steer you into activities like reading new library books and sitting on the couch watching things on TV.  I had brought home some books about planets and asteroids, and then we watched National Geographic's Asteroid: Deadly Impact, which has some pretty amusing footage from the 1990's.  I hope that eventually you are a person who is good at taking care of yourself, and not just when you're sick.  I hope you value your body and your health, and that you're able to enjoy both.  At least, until you start taking kung fu lessons with your Dad.  Don't worry; we've got lots of ice packs.

Love,
Mom


In the pool with Dad:

 Cousins who can't sit still:

 Fancy hair:

Cleaning fish stuff with Dad:

Month 5 or, You're Longer Than This Post

Dear Miriam,

You are five months old already.  It's hard to believe until I try to pick you up and realize how much bigger you are now.  You're good at rolling over, and you're working hard to get your legs in the right places to start crawling.  I'm guessing it won't be very long until you're really moving yourself around.  It's been a while since we played the game Chase the Baby, and this time we'll have a toddler playing, too.  Ready, set, where'd she go?

This month, we gave you rice cereal for the first time.  You had been looking interested in our food for a while, but your staring had gotten downright accusatory.  You even started making angry noises at us, so we figured we'd better see if you were interested in the solids.  You're very enthusiastic about it, but still terribly messy, of course.  You don't really know what to do with your tongue yet and it doesn't really help that you try to suck on your toes at the same time.

You're gaining a bedroom this month!  Dad decided a while ago that we should move the office down to the basement so that you can have your own room.  This is good on many levels.  It means that Dad got rid of a bunch of stuff in the basement.  It means we'll get rid of a bunch of stuff in the office.  It means the office got a good cleaning.  And hopefully it'll mean that you'll start having a better bedtime routine and sleeping better.  At least, it will mean that I can ignore you more.  Which is my goal, really, to ignore my kids as much as possible.  So far, it's not going so well.

You still have blue eyes.

Love,
Mom

Month 3.6 or, Lazy Hazy Crazy Days

Dear Corbin,

We've had a fun month, but you'll just have to take my word for it, because we can't seem to take our camera with us anywhere.

We went to a birthday party for our friend Adrian.  You spent a long time playing with his Matchbox cars, until you found out that there was cake going around.  It was the first party that we've been at where there was a pinata, which you managed to smack a couple of times with the stick.  It was a good sturdy pinata, which is great until you actually want the thing to break.  Cindy ended up beating it to death on the ground, and then a couple of other adults had to help get all of the candy and toys out of it.  You came away with a little plastic pirate guy (it was a pirate themed pinata), a sheet of stickers and a Tigger Pez dispenser.  Every couple of days since then you'll ask for, "some of that Tigger candy," and I let you  put one or two candies in and then eat them.

Speaking of pirates, we went to the Science Museum to see the Pirates exhibit.  It was based on a true story of a ship that was taken by pirates and then sunk in a storm off of Cape Cod.  They had a lot of artifacts, including lots of treasure.  They also had several exhibits about how they recovered artifacts.  Your favorite part seemed to be a video of watching the ship go down in a storm, followed by the model of part of the ship that we could walk through.  You were disappointed that there weren't real pirates, though.

We also went to the Firefighter's Hall and Museum.  My friend Jody met us there with her two kids.  The three of you had fun playing with their train table and sliding down a fire pole.  We all went for a ride on their firetruck, which was very loud and very bouncy.  The most popular thing, though, was being able to squirt water at a board painted to be a house on fire.  You're always happy to be squirting water at something.  Your version of playing in the sprinkler is holding on to it and making it spray on a dirt patch in the yard so you can play in the mud.

Summer session of pre-school ended.  You haven't seemed to miss it when you've had time off.  I'm not sure if that's because you're not socially invested in other kids yet or if you actually don't care.  You do talk about other kids, but not in a very meaningful way.  I wonder if that will change over the course of the next year.

Your accomplishment this month is that you can sing the whole alphabet song.  So now I need to start teaching you to sign along with it.  Then, eventually, you and I can say things to each other and your Dad won't know what we're talking about. 

Love,
Mom


A study in Corbin:

Month 4, or The Long and Short of It

Dear Miriam,

You are four months old, which I totally forgot when I packed for our camping trip.  I was very good about packing pants and socks for you, in case it was colder up north.  And it was, so I thought we were doing fine.  Until I actually tried to dress you in pants and socks and realized that they were all too small for you.  So you spent a couple of days in your pajamas until we got back to the Cottage and it was warm enough for just a shirt again.  The only reason you minded was because you couldn't suck on your toes.

Everyone loved holding you and talking to you, and if I wasn't careful it was easy to lose track of who had wandered off with you.  Aunt Alice tried to use you as reason why her son and his wife should have a baby sooner rather than later; it's not your fault that it didn't work.  We were all speculating on who might be the next baby to come camping, but I think you'll likely be the youngest kid for at least another year.

You are talking a lot now, and starting to get the hang of conversational pauses.  You still do funny little yells sometimes, which always make me laugh.  You complain especially loud when I lay you down and the move out of your line of sight.  These are the sweet days when you actually want your parents to be around you.  We have to savor this time, the time before the teenage years when you'll have those days that you wish you were an orphan.

You're starting on some teething pain, I think, since you spend most of your time now chewing on whatever you can get into your mouth.  It was my finger, most of the time that we were driving to and from the UP, and your little gums felt pretty hard.  So we've got orajel back in the house, and I've got to spend some time finding the teething rings before you chew my finger off.

On a more serious note, I've been feeling intimidated by you lately.  Or rather, not by you, but by raising a girl.  I have been hearing a lot lately about women being treated badly--in video game culture, and in comic book culture, and at various conventions.  There's been controversy around the appearance of a Black female athlete in the Olympics, which is so discouraging when we should simply be celebrating her talent and hard work.  The political arena is still full of people who think that they should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body and your career and your life.  It's hard to think that you'll have to face that in your life, and that I can only prepare you and not shield you forever.  I hope that you will not live your life according to someone else and their ideas of how you should be.  I hope that you are smart enough to believe in yourself, and to protect yourself from that trap.  Gather those people around you who help you see yourself clearly, in all of your beauty and all of your flaws.  A friend who sees both and loves you for both is a true friend.  Or a parent, one of the two.

Love,
Mom

 Waiting for the new tire on the camper:

With Grandpa Lam at the Cottage:

 Fun with Alligator in the car:

3.5, or Free Range Child

Dear Corbin,

I am very late writing your letter this month.  I delayed in order to include our family camping trip, because other than that, we've had an uneventful month.  It's been crazy hot.  We didn't do much except fantasize about moving somewhere with nice weather, like Siberia.

Your last set of molars are finally coming in.  They were late enough that I asked the dentist about it at my last appointment, and of course that night was the night I noticed them appearing.  They aren't giving you any trouble, but they are giving rise to conversations about what will happen when your baby teeth are replaced by your adult teeth.  I tried to convince you that other parts of your body would fall off and be replaced, too, but you weren't buying it.

You're able to write the first two letters of your name, which is kind of exciting.  So far, your penmanship is the opposite of your Uncle Alex's.  His is small and cramped and hard to read.  Yours is huge and sprawling.  Also backwards.  We'll work on that.

You began the month with a trip to Madison, over the 4th of July.  I took a couple of days off to hang out with Miriam so that you could go to, "Grandma and Grandpa's big house."  You've started playing with the Lego sets there, kicked off by the battery-powered train set, of course. You brought a little forklift home with you but I hope you'll wait to get really obsessed until after we buy a bigger house.

And you ended your month with the camping trip to the UP.  We were at Bodi Lake, by Whitefish Point, and we had a fabulous time.  The weather was great, with only one rainy day, and the beach by the lake was perfect for you and the other kids.  It was a little hard for you to play with the other kids this year.  They were all old enough to ride their bikes around the campground, which isn't a skill that you've got yet.  So there were times that you got frustrated and felt left-out.  I think you'll probably have your own bike next summer, and then we'll have to worry about you riding it off of a cliff or into a tree.  We borrowed the Ross's tent camper, which was great.  They had just bought a new 5th wheel-er and offered to loan us the pop-up.  It did manage to get a flat tire on the drive up, but other than that it worked out really well.  It was far more comfortable than a tent, and gave us lots of room to spread out our stuff.  You slept with Dad one night and with me the rest of the nights.  You are a terrible person to share a bed with right now.  You actually crawled on top of Dad in your sleep, and there was one night that I had to pick you up and move you off of my pillows.  Twice.

You had fun playing on the beach with all of your diggers and with a bunch of trucks.  You didn't swim with the other kids, but you had fun watching them jumping in and splashing.  We did s'mores around the campfire one night and omelets in a bag one morning.  Your favorite thing, though, was going fishing with my cousin Brian.  He had a little plastic container of worms, which you loved playing with, and we did actually manage to catch some fish.  It was the first fish I had caught in about 25 years.  Funny enough, the last time I caught a fish was with Brian's dad, my Uncle Steve.  So I felt very accomplished as a mom, being able to meet your expectations that of course we would catch fish.  Between us and the kids in Uncle Steve's boat, we caught enough fish for a fish fry dinner.  You got to witness the fish cleaning, and my uncles and cousins made fun of me when I was showing you all of the internal organs on one of the gutted fish.  You ate two helpings of fish for dinner that night, proving that you are a good fisherman, according to Aunt Karen.  So it was a successful camping trip, which made it really hard to come back to hot, humid weather, and to go back to work the next Monday.

You drove to Madison with Grandma and Grandpa Lam to clean up their camper and leave it in their garage.  When you drove past Oshkosh, the EAA was having their annual air show.  You saw a blimp and a bunch of helicopters.  You were very excited.  You told me on the phone later, "Someday I'm going to ride in a blimp, Mom!"  I hope you do, sweetheart.  I hope you do.

Love,
Mom


Too hot for shirts:

 

Building a mini Cornhole game:

Lego train!

Changing the flat tire on the camper:

 Kayaking with Dad on Bodi Lake:

 At the Lower Falls at Tahquamenon Falls:

Fishing with cousin Brian:

  Watching Uncle Mark gut the fish that we caught:

Playing on the beach:

Squished into Grandma and Grandpa's camper in the rain.  Why is Dad making that face?

Helping clean up Grandma and Grandpa's camper in Madison: