Benjamin Penguin

Dear Benjamin,

Woo-hoo! A great and boisterous woo-hoo to you my little gentleman, for you and Daddy and I have made it through another four weeks. You are now three months old. Books and websites tell me that this is officially the end of the fourth trimester. You are done basting and your little, plastic baby thermometer has popped. You are officially an infant now, no longer a newborn. And what has changed? Well, everything and nothing.

You have begun to be interested in your world. Looking back on those first few weeks of your life, I can characterize them with one word: sleepy. You slept. A lot. You slept through riveting Iron Chef competitions (and seriously, how can you do that with Bobby Flay’s arrogant sass overtaking the screen?). You slept through cats knocking entire tabletops of items onto the floor. You slept through the zillion watts of light battering your closed eyelids as I tried to work through my early postpartum anxiety-induced insomnia. You even slept through most of your meals at the teat. This one I can understand, though. I’ve been known to arise suddenly from a deep sleep and make my way to the kitchen for a snack with nary an ounce of consciousness propelling these actions. As you grow more cognizant of the world unfolding within our apartment, know that there is not a terrifyingly focused mouse attempting to eat all of your overpriced delicious organic strawberry toaster pastries, but rather a somnambulistic Mama fumbling around desperately for something to satisfy her nocturnal sweet tooth. But now, Benjamin? You never sleep. You loathe the mere idea of sleep. You laugh in the face of the Sandman and his useless grains of sleepytime sand particles. It’s almost comical the manner in which you fight the urge to give into the nap. Your eyes are rimmed bright red. Your little head nods forward like a little drunky monkey. You yawn more frequently than you will when you turn 15 and I try to impress you with my tales of how I once got the drummer from Green Day to give me his drumstick in 1991. And in spite of all of this, you do not want to sleep. I know that I make for winning company and believe me when I say that I understand fully that there is a tremendously interesting world out there to explore. Now. Right now. But you get fussy when you get overtired. And by “fussy” I mean you scream until you get yourself so worked up that you continue screaming because now you are both overtired and revved up from the fabulous drama of it all. I’m going to try an experiment where I completely forgo caffeine and in its place begin to ritually shoot Benadryl straight into my veins. That should just about do the trick.

I should note, though, that this newfound hatred of sleep has ushered in many opportunities to interact with you in really delightful ways. In this past month, you’ve really begun to smile all the time and you even laugh now. It’s this little “huh” sound that is generally accompanied by a wide, goofy grin. You also scrunch your nose adorably when you smile really wide. Sometimes you even make a sound that I interpret linguistically as “squee.” It’s very rare, but when I hear it I have to catch myself from falling over because it delights me so. Daddy loves it, too. Your little laugh always makes him laugh and I just love it when my two guys are laughing together. It’s really neat to see how you interact differently with different people and how you respond with laughter to the unique things that they do to get you to laugh. You love it when I touch your nose and tickle your chin. You’ve also taken to me humming the Chicken Dance and Bunny Hop and Hokey Pokey tunes to you while bouncing you around on my lap. You’ll thank me in years to come when you are invited to your first Wisconsin wedding and are supremely prepared for the nuptial dancefloor shenanigans. What with the putting the right foot in and then out, to be repeated by various other body parts, it’s sensible to start prepping for this from a very young age. As for Daddy funnies, you like it when Daddy plays with your teddy bear mobile and sings a horribly offkey tune about happy bears. The lyrics are simply “Happy bears. Happy bears. Happy bears…” repeated ad nauseum. Remember Benjamin, we love Daddy not for his lyrical talents, but because he tries very hard to make us smile. And he generally succeeds. You like it when your Nana shouts “Boo” at you and mock scares you. You like it when your Grandma plays peek-a-boo with you. You like it when your Grandpa Richard says “It’s Grandpa!” really enthusiastically and when your Grandpa Matt has a little conversation in slow, quiet voice with you. The really interesting thing I have found is that you like to have the person that introduced this little funny to you continue the trend. Meaning that I have tried to play peek-a-boo with you for a laugh to no avail. You’ll have none of it from me and I’m left with a stony stare and a little baby huff of impatience. That’s Grandma’s bag and Mama has no place pulling that trick out of her hat.

You’ve started to begin to notice that you have feet. I can’t remember a time when I was not acutely aware of the little round stumps at the end of my cankles, but for you, this little mound of flesh with five wiggly toes appears to be a tremendously novel finding. Last week, you spent about 10 minutes staring at your feet while you were sitting in your high chair and you’ve really taken to wiggling your toes and kicking your legs around. And seemingly overnight, you’ve discovered a newfound interest in using your legs to push against hard surfaces. As of now, you mostly perform this trick to push yourself away from me when you are in the midst of a most wonderful meltdown, but I look forward to the day in which you quite possibly use this skill to push the numerous cats off your legs when they get tangled up in your bedding as you attempt to sleep. Perhaps the most humorous thing about your little feet is that they smell like feet. I don’t know what Daddy and I thought they would smell like, but they are in fact a miniature version of stinky adult feet. I always assumed that such a foot smell comes from the combination of walking with a foot inside a sock inside a shoe, but none of this scenario applies to you, so I am summarily stumped.

You’ve been quite the traveler this past month, going on your first and second road trips. Your first road trip was to my parents in Detroit. You did remarkably well, sleeping through most of the ride (a rare exception to my above comments) and then generously allowing me a few bites of veggie burger at the Red Robin at about the midpoint of our journey. You had a lovely time with your Nana and Grandpa and they doted on you endlessly, which was good because I had such a raging case of gastroenteritis that I actually laid supine on the living room couch for 48 hours straight. You would sit in your Grandpa’s lap and watch college basketball with him and then sit in Nana’s arms and watch Food Network shows with her. We went to the mall (a first!) and Nana bought you a little outfit with a whale on it. It was neat to see your Nana and Grandpa interact with you. If memory serves, there was more than one occasion in which they excitedly pushed past their own child to get their hands on you. I’m old hat and you’re pretty darn awesome, so I forgive them. You actually had my father hanging out on the floor with you and drove my mother to eye-drooping exhaustion, as she never wanted to put you down. I think it’s fair to say they’re pretty smitten, little guy. Your second road trip was to Daddy’s parents in Western Michigan for your first Easter. Again, you were excellent in the car and again patiently allowed me to grab a midtrip snack (donut and decaf coffee from Dunkin Donuts). And again you were doted on in ways that only a grandparent can do. Your Grandma and Grandpa just light up when they see you and hold you. Your Grandma also holds you until, I imagine, her arms must be aching. I tell you all of this, Benjamin, because you sadly won’t remember it and I think it’s important that you know how much the people in your life adore you.

As for you, me and Daddy, we’re doing good, pal. There was a lot to learn in those first two months, but in this past month, things have started to settle into something of a routine. Well, as routine as things can be when you have me as a Mama and your Daddy as a father. Your father and I have been known to trash a whole day’s meticulously planned events because we got three really great Netflix DVDs in the mail and just have to watch them all in successive order. I’m way worse than Daddy, but don’t believe him when he says he is not easily deterred. The lure of a lazy nap on the daybed and a chocolate treat has felled your daddy on more than one occasion. In spite of this, however, we do have a very loose routine that we follow every day. Think of it more as controlled chaos. During the day there is no discernible routine, but rather a pattern to our actions: eat, sleep, chill and on a good day, rest. I’ve grown to really love our days together because it’s just you and me hanging out. I’ve started to view breastfeeding with a fond sweetness now that I am no longer waking up with night sweats and tremors from the sheer frustration and exhaustion of our newly postpartum breastfeeding experiences. I actually quite enjoy it now, more so because you have taken to performing this endearing motion of patting my breast softly with the open palm of your hand as you eat. It is such a warm and sweet gesture that I can’t help but smile every time you do it. At night, right before you go to bed, Daddy gives you a big bottle of breast milk and then holds you until you fall asleep in his arms. Then he tucks you into bed with him and the two of you sleep together for a while until I am ready to turn in and join you in the big family bed. One of these days (or months) we’ll transition you to the crib, but I am so not ready to relinquish having you waking up beside me with your little face near mine and your little smile lighting up my early morning.

Love,
Mama