Four months of Grace

January 22, 2016

Dear Grace,

Napping with teddy

The other day, I went into your room in the morning to watch you sleep a while. Your dad had already gotten you up to feed and change you, and now you were peacefully sleeping once again. Standing there watching you, listening to you breathe through your cute, perpetually stuffy, snot-covered little nose, I nearly burst into tears, for how much I love you. Every night, your dad and I say that to each other: “I love her so much!!” We can hardly contain it.

In every way, my dear, you live up to your name. We can’t believe how lucky we are that you are our daughter. You continue to be an “easy” baby, almost always happy, only crying when you have a legitimate need that needs tending to. You sleep well and eat well. Now, at four and a half months, you are at the delightful stage where you are playing! We can put you on a blanket on the floor surrounded by some of your favorite toys, and you will stay there happily for 15-30 minutes, talking and squirming and stretching and finding ways to move yourself around the blanket. If we sit there with you, you’ve been known to go on like that for an hour.

Of course, Klaus always stands guard. He is your favorite toy of all. He is fond of licking your feet and hands and sometimes face (until we see him and make him stop!). You are fond of grabbing his ears and petting his soft fur. You are always happy when Klaus is in reach, and he is always sure to stay nearby you if we ever walk out of the room. You’re quite a pair!

Ready to walk to daycare, cheeks and all!

You’ve started going to daycare fulltime now, and they love you there. You have acquired the nickname, “Cheeks,” because you have the fullest, most beautiful cheeks, which always have a rosy hue. You love watching all the other kids there – there is so much to see and take in! Every day when we pick you up, Miss Kerri tells us, “She had a good day! She always does.” Daycare is only 1/4 mile from our house, so you and I often walk there, even this week in the snow! You were very interested in the great big flakes that were falling, turning your face up to watch the fluffy, “lake effect” flakes come down. Eventually, though, you turned your face sort of grumpily into the carrier, finally tired of the cold water on your rosy cheeks, I’m sure!

You make an abundance of sounds. Each time you discover something new to do with your voice, you relish in it, repeating the sound and grinning. One of our favorite things about you is the stories you tell yourself. After we put you to bed at night, you usually stay up a few extra minutes, babbling away. Again in the morning, you don’t wake with a cry like one might expect from a baby with a very full diaper and a very empty belly. Instead, you start chatting again. Sometimes your

Ready for snow!

stories even have a clear arc to the storyline, with a climax that wanes into snores. I sometimes just stand at your door, listening, and chuckling with delight, thinking, “She is her parents’ daughter.”

I think morning is your favorite time of day. Dad usually wakes you around 7am to feed and change you, and these are his favorite moments of the day, as he engages with you, his very refreshed daughter suddenly having all her needs tended to at once. My routine is that when I wake you again around 8:30, I come into your room singing “Morning Has Broken,” and you whip your head around to see me, and offer me a great big grin and immediately start wiggling with excitement. While I wash your face, change your clothes and diaper, and get you ready for the day, I sing all our “morning songs” – first Carole King’s “Beautiful” (“You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart!” – and you happily oblige!), and then Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feeling Groovy” (you especially love the parts that go,

Grace's faces, at 4 month

“doo-doo-doo” or “na-na-na” – they never cease to elicit a grin and a giggle). On workdays, we walk to daycare (bundled up in your warm snowsuit!). On Fridays, when I have the day off, we play, and read, and sing. Today I introduced you to my ukulele, and of the songs we sang, your favorite was “This Land Is Your Land.” I also sang you “The Way I Am” (Ingrid Michaelson) and cried most of the way through it because I love you just so much.

Each day I love you more and more, my dear Grace. I want you to stay this way forever, and also I can’t WAIT to see what tomorrow brings! I love you my daughter, my “sweetest pea,” my love, my heart.

                                                                                                Your Mom