{letters to riley} 5 and 3/4 months.

Okay, so I didn't write at all during the break except for that first day. Oh well. This post is also late, but I wrote it at the appropriate time. Riley is six months now, but I'll do his 6 month letter soon.

My Riley, there is no way for me to describe my love for you. As I write this post, you are falling asleep for the night and when I look into your sweet, serene face as it relaxes into slumber I am overwhelmed by the privilege of being your mother. I'm acutely aware that not every woman who wants to gets to experience this role without great difficulty or even at all, so I refuse to take the miracle of your existence for granted during any part of your life.

I'm sorry this letter is a wee bit late. From the middle of your fourth month to the beginning of your fifth, you turned into a sleep deprived little terror. You went from one or two night wakings from anything between four and 10 between seven p.m. and seven a.m. and your dad and I began to lose our minds. When you're awake you're pretty demanding so neither of us get much of a break until you got to sleep. Around four months you started sleeping between eight and 10 hours in a stretch and then some more after a bit of bottle. That gave us a really nice break and some time together too. But at four and a half months you short circuited or something and woke up every two hours. Every night, almost immediately after you were sound asleep, we would rush into bed to make sure we got enough rest before you woke up again.

You got better right around the time your Daddy’s parents came to visit, but when they left it was bad again. And then you did great over Christmas in Topeka, but once we got back it wasn’t so good. You also stopped napping like you used to. You used to have two or three two to three hours naps a day and now you will not nap for more than half an hour when you’re at home. When you’re with your babysitter, though, you apparently sleep great! I’d like to think that when you’re at home you know Daddy and I are there to play so you don’t want to sleep, but I don’t know what it really is.

You started rolling over like gangbusters just before you officially turned five months, although you only seemed to roll to the right. You rolled over back to front first, which I thought was weird because you hate tummy time so much. But shortly after (like a day after) you learned to roll front to back as well so for a few days if we laid you down on the floor your would just roll over and over and over until something stopped you and we had to move you back to the starting point so you could roll some more. But, just a suddenly as you started rolling, you stopped. Since that first week, I think you’ve rolled over only twice and that was almost a whole month ago. I feel like you said, “See, I can do it. Now leave me alone about it!”

You’re getting better at sitting up every day. You seem to have the strength to sit but not the balance. If I sit you up you teeter for a minute and sometimes fall on your side, or suddenly through your arms out and fall back. I think that’s you trying to stand because when you do that in our arms you straighten your legs too.

You still love to stand and sometimes I have to push on your waist to get you to bend in half enough to sit because as soon as your feet touch something you straighten your knees out. If we spot you, you can actually stay upright leaning against something your height, like the coffee table, only drifting to the sides once or twice – you’re so strong!

When we’re out and about people who see you always say how cute you are and fawn over you. We’ve also had several people guess you’re 8 or 9 months and one person guessed a year! It’s funny because other people have told me you seem small for your age, whereas my grandma says you’re a “chunk.” Speaking of Great Grandma Holt, you just think she’s hilarious! You laugh and laugh at her even if she’s not doing anything.

You’re laughing more often now, you you’re a tough cookie! Something has to be either exceptionally funny, or you have to be tickled in just the right spot to make you laugh. Usually you squeal instead, or do this weird grunt thing like the laugh is being ripped from you against your will. You like it when long hair is swished in front of your face or when things get really close to you suddenly. You’re also oddly obsessed with a bizarrely reversed version of peek-a-boo in which we lay a cloth over your face or eyes and then pull it away swiftly. The strangest part of this game is you seem more excited by your face being covered up than uncovered. As the cloth gets closer and closer to your face, you start to get super excited, smiling and kicking and breathing quickly. Then, when your face is covered, you kick like mad and giggle a bit. You also do this adorable thing where you lift up your chin as if to say, “I’m ready for you to take it off now.”

In the past few days you’ve started to see an object you want and realized that you have the power to try and go get it. Before, you’d take something we’d hand to you, but not reach out for things. Over Christmas, you were on Aunt Jennifer’s lap and just started leaning forward for a toy until you fell on your side, out of her lap reaching for it. You looked extremely surprised at what had happened.

YOU DROOL CONSTANTLY. Aside from blowing extremely spitty raspberries all over the place, you just drool. You can soak the entire front of a onesie in as little as 15 minutes. It’s pretty gross, but we chalk it up to your teething, which is intense. You gum our fingers so hard it hurts sometimes, but you’re not very interested in teething rings. No signs of teeth yet, but they have to be under there somewhere.

This is getting long, but I want to remember everything from this precious stage! You’ve started solids and like bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, peaches, pears and prunes, but you hate green beans, pees and squash, not to mention rice cereal. Unfortunately you seem to have a propensity toward sweet things, including your baby acetaminophen, which you get super excited about taking as soon as you see the bottle. However, you also just seem to like food and reach for everything we’re eating, from pasta to fudge to refried beans, you’re already very adventurous in the food department. You have no noticeable allergies yet, which is good.

You love to be up and around, you love people, you get lonely very fast and always want someone around. When you were younger, you seemed to get over stimulated fast, but now I don’t seem to think you know what that means! You’re curious about everything and people often comment on how alert you are. Nothing escapes you and you’re always focused on what’s going on around, trying to take it all in. I think you’re going to be extremely smart.

You’re everything to us and although you exhaust us, I definitely prefer that to having a baby that just sits and stares. I’ve never had more fun in my life than I do with you and I can’t wait — well, that’s not true, I can definitely wait, and I hope that it doesn’t pass too quickly — but I can say I’m extremely excited about watching you as you grow into my precious little boy.

One of my favorite pictures of Riley.