letter to my girl

Laine,

You will be four months old on Thursday. FOUR MONTHS. Although I am amazed at how much you have changed in that amount of time (which is, in a way you can't really understand until you have your own babies, both very short and very long), I am almost more astonished at how much I have changed. I look back on those blurry, panicky weeks when we first brought you home and it feels like remembering a movie. Was that really me? Were those whirlwinds of emotion really mine? I feel like I spent most of the time just looking at you with a mix of amazement and fear, wondering what on earth to do with you and hoping I would figure it out so I could help you grow up happy and healthy and strong. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time in that first month, Lainey-bug, and I sometimes still don't. But every now and then when the car seat snaps in on the first try or you go down for a nap without a fuss or I manage to get out of the house with you and all of your stuff in under ten minutes I think... "huh... I'm getting the hang of this mom thing".

You have added so many skills to your resume in the past months. You still don't like to roll over or spend much time on your tummy, but you are a champ at holding your head up and grabbing onto toys and kicking (boy do you ever love to kick... which I should have known after carrying you for 39 weeks). You love to be read and sung to before bedtime and get the sweetest little furrow in your brow while you study your Winnie the Pooh and Goodnight Moon. You smile and coo and scoot around on the floor and are basically just the cutest, most delightful little creature.

We have also discovered in the past month or so that you are not a fussy baby. You don't cry or fuss or whine. Oh no. You SCREAM. You are a shrieker. Sometimes the rage is more than your little body can contain and your tiny little hands will shake as your sweet little face turns red and you SCREAM. The volume is pretty impressive, as is the pitch. You may well have a future as an opera singer, darling daughter, because the octaves you can achieve are rather extraordinary.

It is funny to me that you will never really know your father or I as we are right now. Our twenties will be present for you only as blurry memories and pictures that you laugh at as a teenager because my hair will be so old-fashioned and my clothes so ridiculous and your father so young and baby-faced. You won't remember this tiny little apartment that we brought you home to. We were so happy to have that extra little bedroom just waiting for you to fill it... so proud of our 900 square feet (which, if you don't know, is actually still rather small for 3 humans and 2 dogs)... SO thrilled about having a washer and dryer, even though they do sit smack in the middle of the kitchen. I spent hours on your nursery, painting with your Grandma Terri, picking the exact spot for each item of furniture and each little decal on the wall, trying to get it just right even though I had no idea that it was YOU there in my tummy. (It's funny to look at you now and realize that it was you in there all along... my little thumper, kicking away at my ribs during the evenings.) This has been a big year for your daddy and I, with graduations and new homes and, of course, you. I know you won't remember it, but it will always be a special and wonderful year in my memory and one I will find great joy in telling you about when you're old enough to want to know.

You are my first child and my first daughter, which means you have a special place in my heart that no one else will ever fill. There is nothing more precious to me than seeing your sweet, silly smile in the morning and your peaceful sleeping face at night. I can't wait to see what the next months bring.

I love you, little one.

Mommy