Greetings Little One

This may not make you the coolest kid in high school

You specifically requested the song Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini while in the car yesterday.

Earlier in the week, when the song Dancing in the Moonlight came on the radio, you raised your fist into the air and shouted, “King Harvest!” followed by “Is he really a king, Mom?”

You’re developing a seriously eclectic taste in music, little one.

Five months old today!

Mommy made the hat.

We made you.

A loss of your super powers

You have transformed from one of the best sleepers of all time, little Charlie, into one of the worst. A two-week fever that turned your long nights of sound sleeping into a fitful, restless nights has now eliminated all of the solid sleep training that you were seemingly born with. Instead of sleeping throughout the night as you once did, you now wake up in the middle of night, sometimes several times, and will not go back to sleep without eating.

Oftentimes you end up in our bed for the rest of the night.

Mommy and I are understandably annoyed and preparing to engage in some hardcore sleep training. This will mean allowing you to cry I out in your own room until you learn to fall asleep, which is not easy. 

It has to be done, little Charlie. Teaching a child to sleep guarantees sleeping success in the future. We had hoped to avoid sleep training with you, but it appears that this recent illness has foiled our plans.

Sorry, kid. You’ll thank us later. 

First jack-o-lantern

You had no desire to remove the insides of the pumpkin (“Gross!”), but you helped to design the cut outs of this jack-o-lantern with Jeff and Nhi, little one, making this your very first jack-o-lantern.

A horse!

I grew up on a horse, little one.

Before my parents divorced, our home and our lives were geared towards the many horses that we owned and boarded. The horses were partly the cause for my parent’s divorce.

My father loved them and my mother did not. 

I used to compete in horse shows with my father.

I was bitten and kicked by horses.

A horse once bolted with me clinging to its back, sans saddle or reins. The horse eventually brought me back home more than an hour later.

So when Jeff sent me these images of you on the back of your very first horse, I was both elated that you were brave enough to climb aboard and a little saddened that your mother and I were in Brattleboro, Vermont at a literary festival at the time.

I'm proud of you, little one. So very proud. And just a little bit sad, too, that I wasn’t there to see this happen.

 

Overstated

You handed me a rock today, little one, and told me it was “the shiniest rock in the whole wide world.”

It wasn’t.

Night night

Your goodnight message to us from your weekend spent with Jeff, little one.

Love this photo

Customary position

Mommy spends a great deal of time nursing you, little one. When in public, you spend a lot of time underneath her cover, happy as a clam.

I think she’s in a boat.

I haven’t seen my little girl in three days. I’m heading home from Santa Cruz today.

I can’t stand being away from this level of cuteness: