One month

It’s hard to believe that it was only a month ago that I was practically rueing the day I had ever gotten pregnant, and was teetering on the brink of letting the doctors do just about anything to me in order to Please Just Get the Baby Out. Thank goodness you did decide to come on your own terms; but don’t think for a minute that I won’t lord that two weeks of overdue misery over you for the rest of your life. It’s been a month now, and you’re still here! You’re not broken yet! Consider yourself lucky that you’re our second child, and we used up all our dumb rookie parenting mistakes on your brother.

Something struck me when you were born… and that was how oddly familiar you were. There you were, a brand new person nobody had ever seen before; but you had Chad’s eyes and (we think) my nose, bits and pieces that we had seen before. On the one hand, we couldn’t stop checking you out; but on the other – you looked more or less exactly as we expected you to look. It almost seemed like we already knew you.

Oddly enough, I can say the same thing with respect to your personality. Liam has always been quiet and introverted and content. I half expected you to be the exact opposite, a little firecracker who was going to turn our world upside down. But, you seem to be a lot like Liam. You are generally very content. You only cry when you are (a) hungry or (b) set down somewhere against your wishes… like Liam, you want to be held most of the time. Unfortunately, because of Liam, we can’t always cater to your desires. I guess that comes with the territory for second and subsequent kiddos everywhere – eventually, their unattended-to squawking just becomes background noise. Lately I have taken to using the Snugli a lot, and thank goodness, you seem to like it… hopefully it will continue to be our happy compromise.

I do think you will turn out to be more social and outgoing than your brother. For a couple of weeks now, you have been flashing us fleeting smiles, something that took forever to coax out of Liam. Which reminds me… do fully expect to be compared to Liam for the rest of your life, or at least the rest of your babyhood. We have no other benchmarks to go by. He’s it.

You are eating well, sleeping well (settling into a routine of being up just twice each night, a welcome change from the early weeks of half a dozen wakenings), doing well with baths and diaper changes… the rather dull mainstays of your early life. We are looking forward to the days ahead when your repertoire expands a little. It’s hard to get to know someone when they have a boob in the mouth during the majority of their waking hours. There are still a million unknowns with you. Things we have yet to find out. Reasons each day to look forward to tomorrow.

At one month old, you weigh 10 pounds 10 ounces and are 23 inches long. Welcome to our family, Miss Mallory… we are very glad to have you!!