Dear Clementine:
The better mommies of the world have been doing this from the beginning: writing letters to their sweet babies month by month to chart development and capture these fleeting first moments. I always meant to do the same, just as I always meant to keep a baby book for you, to organize all the mementoes of your first weeks with us. What can I say? I've been a little busy, what with raising you and all. So you won't have a letter for the first five months. You won't get to read in detail about the first weeks when you mostly ate or slept, your dad and I hovering over you and willing you to wake up and entertain us. We went on and on about your every twitch and snort and let ourselves get totally lost in the baby bubble, no glimpse of the outside world for days on end. You won't get a letter about the month you first smiled or laughed, your first holidays, all the cute amazing things you did when you were still just a little lump. I'm sorry for that--they were precious times. But on the plus side, you won't get any letters about your car terrors, the way I spent most of my maternity leave trapped at home because the car and Target (pretty much the only destination I was up for) made you scream bloody murder. You won't get a letter about all your poop, with which we were obsessed for a while, the trouble you had latching (and the subsequent formation of my very intimate relationship with my breast pump), the way your dad and I had to jump up and down to get you to sleep. You were an odd little creature at the beginning, and although there won't be letters, you can bet your ass I'll be reminding you about all the ups and downs we had for the rest of your life. I can't wait until you have a kid so I can compare horror stories with you.
And so here we are at 5 months. You are an actual baby now, not the little squeaky rag doll we dragged home from the hospital. You roll over all the time and have been doing these cute little sit ups and crunches for months now. Do you have someplace else you'd rather be? You are the world's most rigid baby--no joke, we can't get you to extend an arm without taking the whole body with it clenched up like a fist. You won't bend in the middle, so getting you in and out of your car seat or Bumbo chair is like trying to fold a thick sheet of ice--there is no nuance. You love to hold things, especially rattles, and your dad and I will be going to a special circle of hell for laughing at you every time you get the rattle going and pop yourself in the head with it. So far no bruises, but you sure do get pissed off.
When you can get something in your hand, it's only a matter of seconds until it ends up in your mouth. This is true even of the cat, even when her tail is covered in caked-on kitty litter. I am so over the cat, but you seem to like to pull her hair, so I'm not pushing her out the door. Of all the things you like to chomp, books are your favorite. For a while I deluded myself into thinking your book fetish showed an early aptitude for reading and learning; now I understand that you are a bookworm in the true sense of the word: you chew through books.
As for sleep...well...you sleep like shit. There's no other way to put it. For a while in the beginning you would go down at midnight and sleep until 6 a.m. We LOVED it and felt it was a payback for the car thing, the breastfeeding thing (have I mentioned the breast pump enough yet? It's beckoning even as I type), the crying. Now, though, you have developed this amazing ability to multitask: you can both cry and sleep at the same damn time. It's amazing. Happily, you can also eat and sleep at the same time, so although you wake up a few times most nights, we can get you back to sleep pretty quickly. You are still sleeping in our bed, and I sometimes wonder if that's what's getting you up all night long, but I ultimately don't care. I don't get enough of you during the day, and you certainly don't get enough of us. What the parenting machine calls "co-sleeping" we call just plain good sense. I love having you next to me. It just works.
This month has been your first in daycare, and I am conflicted about it every single day, every single time I drop you off or am racing to pick you up. I can't stand to think of someone else raising you, of someone else getting the largest part of your day. I also can't stand what it does to our days--I feel like I'm cramming in a whole day's worth of togetherness and love into the few hours we get with you between pick-up and when you drift off to sleep. I could go on and on about the conflict, and I imagine you will see a lot of this month by month. For now, let me just say I'm sorry if daycare is screwing you up.
My favorite part of the day with you has always been bath time, and it just keeps getting better. No, we're not some obsessive compulsive freaks who scrub your skin raw each night in order to purify you and keep you germ free. The whole bedtime routine just kind of depends on a bath in there, and I'm much too selfish to give it up. You'll be horrified to know that we (and by that I mean one of us at a time--we're not living on some commune) are usually in the bath tub with you for now. We tried that whole bath chair thing, but it was way too hard. I felt light-headed after all that time bent over the tub, and you kept slipping off to one side or the other and hitting your head. I could never get you clean on the back side (and it's important, that perfect tush!), and your dad and I kept fighting over who got to be closest to the head. It was so not worth the trouble, especially when your very first bath was so simple and lovely and with your dad just a few minutes after you were born. It's so much easier! Anyway, you are obsessed with your bath book and freak out when you see it. The other night you even cried a bit when I didn't fork it over right away (ah, how I can't wait for the temper tantrum years). You lounge against the back of the tub for as long as we let you, and chew on anything you can put in your mouth, laughing and singing smiling the whole time. It really is the best time of day.
One last hobby of the month: you LOVE to blow raspberries and are very thrilled with yourself for having learned how to do it. I know you probably don't know how well you time them, but we've had fun making a game of asking you questions and laughing when the answer is a raspberry (I wish I could transliterate that sound!). Do you like Daddy's shirt? Raspberry. Doesn't that woman on the TV look pretty? Raspberry. You are just so damn smart.
Even though I tell you every day and do everything I can to show you, you will never really understand how much I love you. I can't even remember my life five months and 4 days ago--who was I then? I know it matters, and I want to find a way for you to know that part of me. But for now what I really want is for you to know that it was all leading up to you, depending on your arrival. I won't go on and on because it's all hyperbole and platitudes: words, words, words. You are my own sweet baby, my silly girl, my kitten, my moonpie, my turtle face, my bug, my beanie, my pumpkin, my spitter, my squirmy wormy, my love, my daughter. Rock on, little girl.
I love you,
Mama
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