in love

I actually sat down here because I had to tell the world that I'm in love. My little baby is the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing in the world and I can barely stand it. He's asleep on my bed right now, his long hair all sticking out because he was sweating, and then I turned on the fan and his hair dried all crazy. I'm so glad he has so much hair. It goes down past his ears now. He's not even 7 weeks old.

He coos conversationally now. If you talk to him, he'll offer up a little "goo!" or "urgle!" or "uuuuuh." Doesn't sound too impressive, I know, but it is just excessively darling. I can hardly stand passing him off to anyone else, because I just want to hold him myself all the time.

He is getting so long, some of his 3-month clothes are too short on him. They have trouble snapping on him.

He's been so good at moving his giant head around (did I mention that when he was born, his head circumference was over 2 inches larger than average? This kid's head is HUGE!!). He's been spending less time nursing and more time just looking around and cooing.

He practices sticking out his tongue, and shaping his mouth into an O. If you sit him down in front of you and stick your tongue out at him, he'll try and do it back. If you make an O face at him, he'll try and do it back. If you coo at him, he'll try and make the same sound back. It is way too cute. I love it because when he practices moving his tongue and lips, it looks so purposeful. He uses all sorts of muscles I can't even figure out how to use on my own face, to copy him. He'll try and make an O face and only lift up one quarter of his upper lip, or he'll twist and turn his tongue this way and that in an attempt to stick it out. He's getting better. I just love to watch him try.

Everyone made such a big deal of how hard it would be to be parents. All the time during my pregnancy, I just remembered how I spent my whole life caring for my older brother, and I thought to myself--seriously? These people really think a BABY could be harder than that??? But in the back of my mind, I wondered if they were actually right. If parenthood were really that difficult to adjust to.

But I think it's just like the marriage thing. Everyone said that it was soooo haaard to get used to being married to someone. But Carl and I said our vows, moved in together, and realized that being married is basically just pure awesome. All we had to adjust to was how fantastic it was.

Same thing with this sweet baby boy. People were right when they said parenthood would be an adjustment--but when they spent all their time complaining about pathetically tiny diapers and so on, they should have been talking about how wonderful it all is. We have been mostly struggling with the adjustment of how great it is to be Baby D's parents. We are pretty blessed.