a letter to Leo

Dear Leo,

Between the persistent urping and your new-found favorite pasttime of drooling (which, for the uninitiated, can start as early as 10 weeks and doesn't wait until teething to appear, as I had thought), we advise anyone holding you to wear a rain poncho, or at least have 2 burp cloths handy.


You met more of your fan club last week--Friday night "the girls" came over after Girls Night Out and they all found you charming, even if you are bald and only 2 feet tall (but soon you will be even taller--I'm packing away more clothes every week that you are too big for!). Saturday night was a work-related holiday party and you amused everyone by smiling at your papa every time you were in the same room together. One of my coworkers might have taken you home with her if we'd allowed it.

This week your papa and I finally broke down and bought an automatic bottle warmer, and why, oh why didn't we do this sooner?! (I know you've been trying to ask us this for many weeks.) This means the Leo food goes from refrigerator-cold to tummy-warm in 5 minutes instead of 15 (or longer if we goofed and overheated) on the stove. Today was perhaps the first day I can imagine in which you only screamed once, and not before every feeding as you have traditionally done. You don't usually give us too many cues that you are hungry, so sometimes all we get are the klaxons of hunger coming out of your mouth for warning. Luckily you are sticking fairly consistently to your every-four-hour feeding schedule, so we can be on top of things most of the time.

We've also moved from an every-other night bath to an every night one, since you like the bath-pj's-story-rock-bed routine and go right to sleep afterward. You are sleeping now, and we'll likely have to wake you at 10:30p to give you your last bottle. We tried an experiment this weekend where we let you wake up on your own and you slept until midnight--and woke up again at 4:30--so it will be a bit until we figure out how to get rid of that last pm feeding and sleep all the way through.

Love, Mama

PS Even though you know what you look like, because you have spent lots of time recently with your friend 'the baby in the mirror', I'm including pictures for those members of your fan club who can't stop by and visit.