Now Entering Parenthood...

It’s hard to believe we are almost arriving at month #3 of our life with Simon. Everything people say is true. The first two months are rough, and then the real reward sets in. Much to my parents surprise, I am already ready to bring another life into this world again. I’m going to wait until the end of the year… but Tom and I already find ourselves excitedly talking about the family we are growing into. I find it adorable to imagine our tiny little Simon as someone’s big brother.

But yes… I am getting ahead of myself… after all, we have a summer to enjoy, a second honeymoon to Sonoma, and a whole lot of Simon’s first year on Earth :)

Life Back At Work
It’s getting easier to take him to and from daycare. Now that he is way less fussy even for us, I feel more and more like the Simon they glow to me about is the same Simon I take home at the end of the day. He IS a happy baby, and a good sleeper, and a good eater… well mostly. The biggest side effect of daycare has been that Simon is sometimes finicky about nursing off the breast. It’s not all the time, but enough to be an annoyance.

But mostly, I feel pretty accomplished as a working mommy, able to separate my roles with ease. I like the feeling of isolating myself to pump a few times a day. It grounds me, and reminds me that while I get emotionally involved in the work I do during the day… ultimately, I am only doing that work so that I can help support this other life I get to come home to at the end of the day. By 5 pm when I get in the car, I let my thoughts of work dissipate, and by the time I pick up “the Bug” (our nickname for Simon) I am 99% Mom.

Baby Smiles are Crack for New Parents
It must look boring to an outsider, but watching Simon is better than any program on TV (yes, even LOST). Now that he smiles… and not just questionable smirks, but huge gaping grins and cute little closed mouth smiles… it’s an amazing feeling. You feel bounded in a way that wasn’t there before.

Every morning I wake up a little earlier than I might need to, I bring Simon down to the family room and he smiles and coos at me while I pump. Sometimes in the morning I will be nursing him, and he will look into my eyes deeply and smile so big that he falls right off the boob. Sometimes he is being so social with me that I can’t even get him to finish nursing.

Goo-goo Ga-ga
Simon has become quite the little talker. Some days he won’t make so much as a peep, but other days he can go on for twenty minutes back and forth with one of us. This morning when I put him down on his changing table, he actually exclaimed “yeah!” and at dinner he went on for about five minutes of “oooo-grrrrroooo owww” like he was telling us the story of his day.

I keep listening closely every day for the sounds of new letters. At first it was all vowels, and then slowly he started adding new sounds. Just like classic baby “goo” and “ga”, it was funny to me that the “G” sound came early. This week he has adopted the Spanish rolling “rrrrrrr”. Newcomers on the scene are the “L” and the “B”. I’m still waiting for the “M” sound so that I can maybe here “mama” in the near future!!

Milestones This Month

• First sleep through the night!! Well, not quite. Technically it is supposed to be from midnight until 5 or 6 am. Simon has twice woken up at 4:30 am, just to make it not quite a “sleep through the night”. On 4/1 (April Fool’s Day), he slept for 8 hour straight, from 8:30 pm to 4:30 am… when I finally broke down to check and make sure he was okay.
• First playtime with a toy. He is just beginning to understand what his hands are and how to manipulate them. This week I watched him actually shake a rattle and concentrate intensely on what his hands were doing. He even cried when he accidentally dropped his new found toy. And he has started to finally reach towards the dangly things in his playmat.
• First giggles? Tom swears that when he was wearing Simon in the Baby Bjorn, and he walked passed a mirror… Simon looked at his reflection, smiled hugely and let out a few quick laughs. We still haven’t heard a clear giggle fit yet, but Simon is so smiley all the time, we must be close.

Favorite New Photos of the Bug