1 month old

Dear Leo,

Today, you are one month old. Mommy & I are still trying to figure you out. You've given us some scares with the ups and downs of your weight during the first week of your life, but we think that you've tipped 9 pounds now.

I occasionally worry when you play with the nipple without establishing a grip on it, because I know you can be a champion sucker when you want to be. I've seen you down an entire 4-oz. bottle in 15 minutes flat, including several large burps, and fall asleep 5 minutes later. I've also seen you take nearly 30 minutes to get through the same bottle, and be up for hours afterward, not crying your head off, but not happy, either.

There are times when you can almost hold your head up by yourself, if you're pushing off somebody's chest. However, the few times I've tried to put you down on the floor to play, it has made you extremely unhappy. Even more impressive is the way you try to stand up when we're burping you in a lap, especially because of how close you come to succeeding.

You like moving around, whether you're strapped into the Baby Bjorn and one of us is walking with you, in the stroller, or going for a drive in the car. Mommy still doesn't like you being in the back seat by yourself, but your neck muscles will develop in the next couple months to where you can support your head without it flopping around to the side.

I can't tell whether you're starting to recognize the difference between the songs I sing you or not. My favorites to sing are Skylark and Cottleston Pie. Mommy is definitely better at making up the silly songs than I am, but you seem to like mine, too.

In the last couple days, you've started to space your mealtimes out to every 4 hours, and you don't know how happy that has made your parents. Now, if you'll just stay fairly solidly asleep in between, instead of waking up every 30-45 minutes, we can start to feel human again.

Grandma Marge & Grandpa Erv have been so excited to be here to see both your 4-week and 1-month birthdays. They get to be here tomorrow, too, before going back home to 'sconsin. Aunt LaLa had to go home last week, although I think if she could figure out a way to be here half the time and at home the other half, she'd do it in a heartbeat.

The tummy medicine has seemed to help most of the long-delay spit-up episodes, although they haven't done a thing about the full-body hiccups. Somewhat more impressive are the episodes in which we start to sit you up to burp and you oblige us all on your own, without any help at all.