This is weird. It's like we're developing a routine, a pattern. Things happen, and then they happen that way again. And then they happen that way again again.

Sometimes it's really good. Like when I go to pick you up in the afternoons and you see me and do a little body wiggle--like your whole body goes stiff, your arms go out, and you'd jump if you could, you know, stand--and the best, best! part is after I pick you up.
You grin that grin with your tongue hanging out, and one hand spastically reaches out to find my cheek. And then the other hand finds my other cheek. And there you are patting my cheeks as if to say, "It's good, Mama! It's good that you're here and that I'm here and today! It was good!"

And then you lean in and eat my chin.

You do that in the semi-dark pre-dawn grey of your room, as we snuggle in the glider and listen to NPR muster on about bank failures and plunging stocks (which would totally matter if we had any savings... in case you were wondering about why you are supporting us in our retirement? I blame the banks. Not our own ineptitude. It's all W's fault.) and you decide you don't need to sleep and you rear back and do the hands on cheeks thing and the chin nibble and I think, who needs the Dow anyway? Other mornings we just both fall back asleep together, and it's like your first months when we would kick back in the recliner and sleep until lunchtime. Only this is at five a.m. and I do have to put you back down eventually and haul my ass in to teach some teenagers. But for about fifty minutes each morning I can forget that, forget investment plans, forget anything, because you have my cheeks in your hands.

Speaking of which, do you remember that time I fell out of the glider? No? Good, because it totally didn't happen.

Other repetitions aren't so fun. Your grandma and grandpa have graciously taken to watching you on Thursdays which is awesome--I am so excited for you to have your own relationship with them and your own patterns and habits and in-jokes. Right now your only pattern with them is not eating. I'm not worried, exactly. I mean, you're five months old, so it's not like you have weight worries or anything. You'll eat when you feel like it, and eventually you will, but it worries your grandma so I really wish you'd eat for her. Maybe it'll just take solid foods for that to happen.

And really, her cooking is so good, it is worth waiting for. Maybe that's what you're doing.

You've started rolling over, but so far you only have half of it down. And then you get caught on your belly and that is Not. Okay. Or you reach for something (like paper! OMG paper! You want! Paper!) and plop! you've landed on your belly and that is Not. Okay. So clearly your next step is to figure out how to get yourself out of that predicament. When that happens, I have a feeling, nothing in the house is safe. Because right now we put you down and flip! you're turned over. We turn you back and flip! you're turned over.

In the mornings I wake up with you and we have our hour that's just us. Then Daddy takes you in to daycare. You do your thing there (which apparently involves two or three wardrobe changes a day. Is this how Elton John got started?) and then I get you in the afternoon. And then we cuddle and play and roll over and then suddenly it's bedtime and time for a new day to start and one day slips into another. Next thing I know you'll be asking me for the car and I'll say you didn't fill it up with gas last time and you'll say it was empty when I lent it to you and that'll probably be true.

But as patterns go? This doesn't suck.

Love Mama.