Letter to Lucia: 6 Months (For Real This Time)
Little Lucia,
I already wrote you a six-month letter, but at that point you weren’t actually six months old. So consider that letter, and all the ones before it, as simply oddly spaced letters written for no particular reason. This letter should get us back on a sensible track.
Carrots, sweet potatoes, avocado, and butternut squash—these are part of your life now, and you love them all. You are a good little eater, opening your mouth wide for each bite (though I have to be quick; sometimes you close your mouth before I get the spoon in) and only occasionally spitting anything out. Sometimes you try to eat your bib between bites, or sneeze, and this creates a big mess. This week I somehow managed to get rice cereal on the back of my sweater, up by the collar—who knows how it got there? Once you start feeding yourself I can only imagine the sort of cleanup mealtimes will involve.
You are full of new noises. Thankfully, you seem to have lost interest in your ear-piercing scream; you’re now in a “hissing viper” stage, making a sound from the back of your throat that sounds, for lack of a better description, like radio static. You also gurgle now, making good use of your copious drool. And you deliver all your sounds with whole-face smiles that never fail to cheer me, even when I’m frustrated or tired.
And tired I am. I seem to be having a spell of insomnia this week, and over the past three nights I’ve had just ten hours of sleep. I fall asleep fine; but after you wake up, and after I soothe or feed you, I simply can’t fall asleep again. This time, at least, my exhaustion is not your fault, and I feel bad when my tiredness makes me less patient with you than I should be.
A short letter this time; my tired head is spinning. You are eating some rice cereal with Daddy as I type this, occasionally letting out a yell just for the sake of it. Six months, little one. Six months.
I already wrote you a six-month letter, but at that point you weren’t actually six months old. So consider that letter, and all the ones before it, as simply oddly spaced letters written for no particular reason. This letter should get us back on a sensible track.
Carrots, sweet potatoes, avocado, and butternut squash—these are part of your life now, and you love them all. You are a good little eater, opening your mouth wide for each bite (though I have to be quick; sometimes you close your mouth before I get the spoon in) and only occasionally spitting anything out. Sometimes you try to eat your bib between bites, or sneeze, and this creates a big mess. This week I somehow managed to get rice cereal on the back of my sweater, up by the collar—who knows how it got there? Once you start feeding yourself I can only imagine the sort of cleanup mealtimes will involve.
You are full of new noises. Thankfully, you seem to have lost interest in your ear-piercing scream; you’re now in a “hissing viper” stage, making a sound from the back of your throat that sounds, for lack of a better description, like radio static. You also gurgle now, making good use of your copious drool. And you deliver all your sounds with whole-face smiles that never fail to cheer me, even when I’m frustrated or tired.
And tired I am. I seem to be having a spell of insomnia this week, and over the past three nights I’ve had just ten hours of sleep. I fall asleep fine; but after you wake up, and after I soothe or feed you, I simply can’t fall asleep again. This time, at least, my exhaustion is not your fault, and I feel bad when my tiredness makes me less patient with you than I should be.
A short letter this time; my tired head is spinning. You are eating some rice cereal with Daddy as I type this, occasionally letting out a yell just for the sake of it. Six months, little one. Six months.
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