Dear Ms Ingrid,

Today you are one whole month old. You’ve now seen every number day there is, because you were born in May, which is an ‘all the rest’ month. I’ll explain when you’re older.  You have gone from a googly-eyed, wrinkly-toed, head-antennaed newborn to a (sometimes) googly-eyed, red-faced, smelly-necked one month old. I canhardly believe it!

There are things I forgot to tell you about your birthday, like how Auntie Em had more barbecue chips than you would even IMAGINE in one of those snack size bags, because she kept eating them between helping me push,and I just could not believe that the bag wasn’t empty yet, goddammit, or about how your grammie and grampie were waiting at a hotel all day to hear when you arrived (when they weren’t eating in the hospital cafetariea, "just in case.") or how after everyone left that night, your dad I just stared at you for as long as we could, taking it all in.

In those first days, you balled up just like you’d been insideme, and your outside movements made the weird inside movements I’d been feeling make sense. You’dmarch in place, just like you did inside me, and you still do. You are amazingly strong, those marching legs now propel you up my chest when you’re really angry, you push yourself into a downward dog position and inchworm your way up, sometimes using my navel as a foothold.  You’ve turned over from belly to back a few times for your Dad, mostly motivated by severe irritation at the concept of "tummy time."

When you get angry, you start by windmilling your limbs, and opening your mouth and turning bright red,but it takes you a good minute or two to really let fly with the crying. In that minute, you just vibrate with energy. When you sneeze, it’s usually four in succession, and you used to punchyourself in the face with each one, but that’s gotten better as you’ve gained more control of your arms. Your hands are often curled up into fists, with your thumb peeking out form your index finger, which is the ASL sign for the letter "T." The heat of early summer has given you a rash from the top of your head to your chest, basically, and while it pains us to look at it, you don’t seem too bothered. We’ve also learned that broccoli makes you throw up, and that you don’t like to be gassy.

You can see your fishies on your swing as they spin around, your head tracks their movement and you seem mystified that as one disappearsout of your range of vision, another one appears.  In the last week or so, though, you’ve suddenly started looking at
us.Not at the high contrast of our heads against a light background, but
really LOOKING at us.  You seem to even know when we’re coming near; when you start to cry, you pause when you hear us on our way to comfort you.

You make use laugh, more than anything else, even when its cranky o’clock.  In addition to seeing us, you’ve even started to smile, real smiles, not gas or flukey smiles. We can’t get you to smile on command, which is almost better, because those drive-by grins are such a surprise, every time they happen, and we adore every one of them.

The other night, we were all in bed, and you and your daddy were asleep, when you startled yourself awake, yelped, and flailed your arms wildly, trying to regain your senses. I reached out my hand and you grabbed it, relaxed your head to ths side and dropped back to sleep, your tiny little long-fingered hand pressed hard against my own. It’s moments like that that make me realize what it means to be your mother, to be able to quiet a bad dream by being there to hold on to.  The bad dreams will get bigger and badder as you get older, and my hand will eventually cease to be the source of comfort it was that night, but I’ll always be reaching out to you to try to make it better.

Love, Mama