Dearest Son A,

Hey!  You’re seven months and a couple of days!  Do you know what that means?  Only five more months of access to the jubblies . . . and a few other things, you know (but that’s a bit on the forefront of the scribe’s mind:  give me my girlies back).

It’s been quite a month.  You, and by “you” I mean you and your brother and your father and your slightly twitchy mother, have survived The Holiday Season.  And what a Holiday Season it was:  definitely qualifying for the use of capital letters.  Because we traveled:  oh, how we traveled.  On top of attempting to decorate the house, attend preschool and preschool programs, charm nursery workers at Bible Fellowship and MOPS and the occasional visit to church on a Sunday morning (novel idea), clean the house for visitors, bakebakebake, shopshopshop, find meaningful gifts for one and all, and maintain some sense of sanity and an attitude of cheer because “Dang it!  I did a lot of work for this, and you all are going to like it!”  Which is just why Jesus came to earth:  to make mothers force their families to be dressed up, enjoy fancy meals and activities that put them in a bad mood, and expect a joyful response - Christ with Us. 

In an attempt to visit all extended family and prepare for a cross country trip, we celebrated Christmas as a family on the night of the 22nd.   We threw on our pajamas, loaded up in the car, and drove around the ‘berg looking at houses that actually performed their civic duty by displaying Christmas lights.  We rate the neighborhoods.  And yes, the same neighborhood won again.  Your brother was happy to exclaim, “Christmas!  Right over there!” over and over while you managed to stay awake, chewing on your pacifier.

You and your brother had quite the time opening up presents.  I didn’t think you’d really care about what was going on:  I was wrong.  Whanging on and ripping packages open is definitely a gift:  I think you’re going to rock at the gopher game at Chuck E. Cheese.

You’ve mastered the art of rolling.  To both sides!  So now I don’t have to come downstairs to find you stuck against the couch or the wall and flip you around so you can roll to the other side.  Although now I don’t know where I’ll find you:  please don’t find the stairs yet - we haven’t figured out LittleA Confinement 2008 yet.  I mean, we’re still working on JJ Confinement, but I have a feeling that project will take a couple of decades, and a team of engineers or Discovery Channel type people.

After we had a great Christmas with your Nana and Papa and K & G & JO, we hustled up to the Valley to have Christmas number three (and a small rest) with the Gran, Granddaddy, and Unca Matt before heading out on a cross country voyage entailing leaving the Valley at 3:30 in the morning and returning at 2:00 in the morning a few days later.  We were tired.  And we found out:  much like your uncle, you like home.

How do we know that?  Because you don’t sleep.  And you don’t eat well.  And your vocalizations tend to be of a fussy and discontent nature.  Which, let me tell you, people on an airplane just *love* to hear.  Fortunately, you could not resist your Pappy’s LockDown:  once limbs are contained, you lose consciousness.  It’s your Achilles’ heel.

But you looked pretty as you strutted your stuff at your first wedding.

Your Pappy didn’t look too bad, either.

And while you were fussy, the amazing thing is that your extended extended family didn’t mind.  Upon meeting them, we were not in fine form:  we’d had a long day and were not really on speaking terms (because when I’m tired,  I prefer to go to your level of maturity:  it’s shorter).  But they swept you away and doodled you all around the room.  And these were the guys!  They said things like, “No worries:  this is how babies are.  What a happy little guy!”  And I started to believe them.  That was nice.

You weren’t so hip to actually experience the wedding:  you know, the event that we meticulously packed for and cleaned up the house and stopped the paper and drove across states to then fly across many many states and stay in a hotel and watch lots of episodes of “What Not to Wear” when killing time and had folks scrape together baby gear like pack’n'plays and car seats and extra bits of sanity for.  Instead, we sat in the lobby of the church with your dad’s cousin’s wife and her two boys who felt similarly.  Lo and behold, you brother wandered out as well:  he knew where the party was at.

M & I bonded sharing stories about active boys (’theoretical’ stories, of course) and expressing our thoughts on having big events during the holiday season (cah-ray-zee); so you better be careful, if you don’t want to be shipped back to Ohio anytime soon (although I think she’d be sending a reciprocal package our direction).

So we’ve returned back to normal life, whatever that may be.  The day after getting home we went to Beloved Doctor Tami’s to find out that you’re 26.5 inches long (50th percentile), 16.2 lbs. (20th - way to go up!  I think it’s all in your cheeks), and something healthy for your heads size.  I can’t really remember all the details:  I was more busy throwing cotton balls at your brother (a great diversion for both parties involved) and ignoring the fact that they were going to poke your precious little squishy thighs with nasty nasty things that in the long run will make you feel better but at the moment is notsofun.  Although it did help you sleep.  For like, you know, 12 hours.

Apparently the cotton ball action helped your brother sleep better as well.

(He fell asleep listening to The Philadelphia Chickens album:  it’s an exhausting compilation.  His dad thinks he’s all ready for college life now, falling asleep listening to an Ipod while on the couch).

But it didn’t last long until life returned to its normal toy-infused frenzy.

Because you play with toys.  And you sit.  And you eat all sorts of rice cereal.  And you think your brother is the best toy you got for Christmas, especially when he runs in circles and falls on the ground.  Because that’s the kind of humor that runs in our family lines:  classy and refined.

It’s been rainy outside, which I find as a giant soul suck.  But you’re at this wonderful age where you like to sit on my lap and be the best, warmest heater ever.  And I feel that joyous heat seep slowly into my soul.  Even though some of my tiredness may have something to do with you (Please.  Sleep.  Better.  Pleeeeeeease.), I can’t help but laugh as I hear you babbling in your recently introduced Big Boy Crib in the morning.  We look out the window no matter what the weather and ponder what the day holds.  And I’m thankful for one of my greatest Christmas presents of all.

Love, Ma.

Little A Adventures, Mama Musings