Almost The Third Month

Teddy smiles now. Actually he’s been doing that for quite a while and I think the first laugh probably isn’t too far off. I may have written this before, but I went into parenting thinking that the first three months would be a totally thankless slog before the kid laughed, smiled, or did anything to remotely suggest he liked me and/or knew who I was. I was prepared for that slog, but I’m pretty damn happy things turned out differently. We get smiles. We also get a little conversation. He’s chattiest during and after a changing, or really any time when he’s free of the tyranny of pants. “Ngah!” he’ll say. Or “Ngoo!” Throwing in “Kkkkkkkkhhhh!” upon occasion.

He’s also growing growing growing, which is crazily apparent if you haven’t seen him for a few days. Sarah and Teddy stayed on in Kingston for a little bit after Floriana passed away, and he was enormous by the time I saw him next. (He was a big hit with the family while in Kingston. The situation with Flo was pretty terrible, so it was great that Teddy could be around to cause some cheer.) And the weight he’s gained isn’t just face weight, he’s getting really long, too. His sleepers don’t have a very long lifespan anymore.

I started this post in draft about two weeks ago, and before I could finish and post, Sarah beat me to the punch at her blog. Check it out right now. Along with more detail about Aunt Flo, she gives a very candid portrayal of the many, many obstacles she’s faced trying to breastfeed this kid. It’s beautifully and honestly stated, and I can only add one thing. She’s given props to a lot of different people for helping and supporting her over the past two months, but you should know that she has been really incredible though all this. She’s gone through a lot of awful, painful days, weeks where it’s just one issue after the other. And while she’ll always be honest if she feels exhausted or miserable, she’ll never wallow. She’s crazily resilient. She’ll run into some kind of massive issue (i.e. a successive round of mastitis), then she’ll be upset, she’ll rant—but somewhere between four and twenty-four hours later, she’s got a gameplan; she’s moving on with her life. Teddy’s very lucky to have her, and obviously so am I.

That’s all for now. Sarah’s got a suite of photos at her site which I won’t repost here, but I’ll leave you with this video of Teddy chatting me up. I’d like to convince you that this didn't require forty takes… and in truth, it didn't. It was probably closer to nine hundred.




P.S. I’ll try not to go a month and half before posting next time.