Five Months

Dear Cole,

Today you turned five months. I can’t believe you are already this big. Almost half a year. Sometimes I look at you and still can’t believe that you are our baby. OUR baby. At the same time, I feel like you have been part of our life for a very long time. I can not imagine our family without you—well, I could not imagine our family without since the moment you were born.

You are, as far as I am concerned, the easiest baby on the face of the planet. When people ask me how you are, I always say “great” or “wonderful” or “growing fast.” Sometimes I say “he is such an easy baby,” and then I often regret saying it. One—because I am afraid to jinx it. And two—I don’t want people to hate me for being so lucky. I know I would if I were on the other side of it.

Let’s start with sleep. Here is how you go to sleep at night. After dinner, between 7:30 and 8, I nurse you. Then Daddy or I give you a bottle (since I don’t have enough milk for you, which is very frustrating for me, but after all, this space is not about me; it is about you, so I will stop complaining). Then we burp you and change your diaper. Then we take you to the bedroom. We give you kisses. And then comes the interesting part. Are you ready for it? Here it comes. We lay you down in the bassinet, leave the room and THEN YOU FALL ASLEEP. I kid you not. Asleep. On your own. No rocking, no singing, no shooshing, no bouncing, no crying it out. Nothing. Sometimes you talk for a minute, sometimes you laugh. But within a few minutes you fall asleep.

Another thing about sleep is equally amazing. You have been sleeping through the night since you were 8 weeks old. When I mention this to others, they say, “So he only wakes up to eat that then goes back to sleep at night?” And I respond, “No, he is actually sleeping the entire night, as in from 8:30 until 7:30, without waking up at all.” Funny thing is, we tried a few sleep tricks on you to help you sleep longer (such as dream feeds, which worked wonders for your brother)—before you started sleeping through the night. But none of them work. So we backed off, thinking you were not ready. And that’s when you decided to start sleeping all night long.

As a caveat, I should admit that your daytime sleep has not been as impressive. Once in a while, you take a two- or even three-hour nap, but most of the time your daytime naps don’t last more than an hour. But who cares? You are sleeping all night long!

You are a wonderfully smiley baby. Any time you make eye contact with someone, you smile your adorable toothless grin. And it is not just your mouth—your entire face smiles: your eyes twinkle, your fat cheeks get dimples, your eyebrows stretch out. It is such a heartwarming sight. You don’t seem to have any stranger anxiety yet as you smile as everyone.

You seem to enjoy developing your social skills more than your motor ones. You can sit up fairly well on your own, but you still can’t roll over or lay happily on your tummy for more than a couple of minutes. I am convinced that it’s not because you can’t but because you are not interested. Being able to sit up, coupled with your recent discovery of your feet, which you love to grab and chew on when you are on your back, provides you with enough interesting perspectives on the outside world that you don’t need to bother with rolling.

You are still a summer storm, as your daddy called you—when something displeases you, you let us know immediately and with intensity. You can not be distracted and won’t calm down until your displeasure is resolved—and then you are suddenly peaceful and happy as if nothing ever happened. However, there are only two things that upset you: 1) hunger (and we usually do a preemptive strike—aka feed you—before you get upset about that) and 2) your car seat (turning on static on the radio often solves this problem; and your overall dislike of the car seat seem to be steadily improving with time).

There is one thing that works like magic when you are upset: singing. You respond immediately when we sing to you. “ABCs,” Russian “Baju Bajushku Baju” and “You Are My Sunshine” are your favorites.

My heart is so absolutely filled with love for you, and I can not get enough of holding you and kissing you. You truly are my sunshine.




Love,
Mom