Letter to Greta: 5 Months

Dear Littlest One,

Five months! If I were miscalculating your age, as I did with Lucia, I’d probably be starting you on solid foods right about now. I haven’t miscalculated, and you’re not starting solids, even though you’re verging on being ready. When I eat now, if you happen to be nearby, you watch me so avidly that it’s like you’re willing the food into your own mouth. I was holding you yesterday while eating a banana, and I really though you were going to reach out and grab it. Also, you’re getting up at least once a night and eating for a long time, and during the day I feel like I nurse you all the time, so I know you’ll be ready soon. I’m in no hurry, though. Six months will be our starting date.

If possible, you’ve gotten even cuter over the past few weeks. You are screeching, shrieking, cooing, gurgling, and babbling all the time. You have a riotous laugh, which you bestow almost exclusively on Lucia—you especially love when she jumps up and down. You have an intense, penetrating stare, but you’re no longer as serious as you once were; you’re almost always smiling. When you’re not smiling, you’re usually tired, which is more or less the only time you cry. Unless the sun’s in your eyes, which you despise. Otherwise you are a pleasant, easy baby almost all of the time.

It makes me sad that you and I don’t get any one-on-one time, and I’m hoping that I find a way to do that when we move to our new town. Perhaps there will be a way for you and I to do a class together, maybe on a weekend when Lucia can spend time with Daddy. Until then, though, you seem to enjoy doing things all together. You sit with Lucia in music class and are rapt the whole time, even screeching happily when I spin you around during the dance song. You sometimes like being at the playground, if it’s overcast and I hold you so you can look all around. And you like to sit with Lucia and me as we do Play-Doh or read books, just happy to be included. One of these days you are going to be able to sit down with your sister at the art table and join in.

You are rolling over from tummy to back. You can sit for a few seconds at a time, propped up on your hands. You are grabbing toys, holding them, and pulling them in to chew. You are drooling buckets, and spitting up a lot (a new, pleasant thing). You can take out your pacifier and, sometimes, put it back into your mouth. You prefer to fall asleep on your own in your crib after I rock you just for a little while. You are still taking three naps most days.

Perhaps my favorite thing you do right now is peer at me: After I burp you, sometimes I’ll feel you pull back a little, and when I turn my head, there you are, peering at me very, very closely with a little smile. Sometimes you’ll slowly open your mouth and move in, attempting to chew on my cheek (I prefer to think you’re trying to give me a kiss). Even at three in the morning this is cute, and that’s something.

Your cheeks are so round and fat, littlest one, that sometimes when I look at your profile I can’t see your nose. You are just too, too adorable.