This month the hands have really started grabbing.   Grabbing mommy’s hair.  Grabbing our fingers.  Grabbing toys.  Grabbing plates.  Grabbing toes.  All with one objective, to get it in your mouth, whatever it is.  You’re exploring your world with the help of mouth and hands.  When we lay you down to change a diaper your toes always go right up to your mouth and we have to negotiate access to your legs one at a time to do the diaper change.

You’re a super happy baby and are not shy about sharing smiles and laughs with strangers.  You love going to the grocery store and babble as we walk through the store (and sometimes fall asleep somewhere around baking).  We walk nearly everyday and you love facing out to look at the world. This month you’ve been seeing and touching your first flowers and budding trees.  Of course you’ve also seen a good bit of snow this month as it’s been a super snowy and wet April.

Bedtime has been getting easier most nights.  We still wear you after doing stories, milk, and your daddy massage but often you fall asleep without crying.  It makes me hopeful that perhaps someday (hopefully before you’re too heavy to wear) we won’t have to wear you to bed.

This next little bit is going to be a lot of fun!  You’re six months now so bring on the food!  And I’m sure one of these days you’ll progress from rolling one direction every few weeks.    But we’re not rushing it, we have years ahead of us chasing you and a few weeks or months where you stay in one place seems just fine.

Love you always, Peanut!

Now I’ll give my little River a hug and remind her not to grow up too fast.  And remind myself to cherish these moments, even the crying when I’m exhausted because it’ll all be behind us so quickly.  And I’m sure I’ll miss it.

Today they live together in their own paradise complete with their growing menagerie of animals.  Gracie the dog is the sweetest dog you’ll ever meet.  And Cricket the horse is beautiful and magnificent.  All together nestled in the woods.

Congratulations to Elizabeth and Evan in crafting together the life you’ve always dreamed of!

Happy five month birthday!

It’s crazy that you’ve been here on the outside for five whole months already.  That’s nearly half a year.  When you first came out it was Fall and shortly thereafter it turned into Winter with some snow your first week and now the bulbs are coming up in the garden and you’ve been here this whole time.  You’re not a tiny little helpless newborn anymore and we kind of miss that now though I suspect that our memory might be rosier than it actually felt when you were tiny and we didn’t know what to do with you and you weren’t sure you could trust us (but of course you had no choice).

This month we visited Grandpa in Florida and you had a blast.  You loved smiling and laughing with him.  You especially loved when he stole your nose over and over.  The birds were all afraid of you which was mildly amusing.  Despite mommy and daddy being worried about the flights you actually did great.  You went to the beach for the first time and saw the Gulf of Mexico but we didn’t dip your toes in it.

Your big achievement of late has been your ability to grab.  We’re learning to be careful about what we put within reach of those little hands.  You don’t seem to discriminate yet about what you grab, if it’s within reach you want to touch it and of course bring it to your mouth.  You like to feel our faces too if we put them within reach.  I think you like daddy’s face better because he has more interesting textures.  You’ve also discovered your voice and have taken to screaming for fun.  It’s actually quite amusing until it turns into sad screaming.  You’ve also continued to work on rolling.  You took somewhere between two and three weeks off from when you first figured out how to roll until you did it again.  You still don’t do more than a couple a day but it does seem you remember how to.  You’re still working on rolling from your back to your tummy but you’ll figure that out eventually.

For about a month you’ve essentially been sleeping through the night.  You stir to nurse but your little eyes are closed from 7:30 until 6:30.

Love you always,

Mommy and Daddy

You are so beautifully tiny.  So helpless.  So very loved.

We’re excited that you’re here.  And once she’s a little older, River will be too.

The ceremony is the heart of a wedding.  And the vows, the heart of the ceremony.  In Melanie and Jason’s vows they truly embraced all of each other as they promised their hearts, their lives, and their true selves to each other.  Jason promised to be his sarcastic self.  Melanie promised not to keep a clean house and to become engrossed in work and come home late.  With generous hearts both promised to care deeply about each other, their friends and family, and the greater world.  I have no doubt they will keep this promise.

Congratulations on your marriage, Melanie and Jason!  Together you will undoubtedly make life better and richer for all you touch.

This month was a lot of fun!!

At the begining of the month you let out your first giggles and now you giggle some nearly every day.  Your daddy and I go to extreme lengths to get those joyous belly laughs out of you.  You started the month trying really hard to roll when we placed you in tummy time.  Now you roll when you feel like it (just every few days).  You’ve started to be very attached to mommy which while it touches my heart that you love me so, it makes daddy sad.  For now in times of distress, mommy is the answer.  All of a sudden your hands have become extremely interesting.  You enjoy staring at them and even more, enjoy sucking on those tasty hands.  You’ve started grunting as you work to bring your hands and whatever they can grab to your gaping mouth.  You still don’t like car rides but generally after ten minutes you fall asleep from what I presume is exhaustion and I breath a sigh of relief at the sudden silence.

You’ve started sleeping through the night now and we’ve recently implemented a bedtime for you.  When you started being awake later than we wanted to go to bed ourselves it seemed time to get you to sleep sooner.

Love always,

Mommy and Daddy

It’s been months but I still laugh when I think about Jill’s, Anna’s sister, speech at the reception.  These two were truly meant to be together if their love of silliness is any indication.  When they were children, Anna and her family took a trip to see long dead dinosaurs (of course).  And Anna throughout the trip, kept letting out “rawr’s”.  Years and years later, Anna and Josh visited Jill and her husband in Chicago.  As they drove by a pirate themed restaurant from the backseat Jill heard Josh let out his version of a pirate “rawr”.  In that instant she knew this man was meant for Anna.

After we’d loaded the car, Eric and I took a few moments to treasure the wedding.  We gazed up at the stars above the mountains and embraced each other, exhausted and happy.  From the beginning of June until this, the last day of September, we’d hardly had a break and now we were at the end.  At the end of an exhilarating summer.  A summer where we developed a deeper understanding of each other.  A summer where we witnessed love again and again.  Love of couples for each other.  And equally poignant, the love of their communities, communities rejoicing in their union and supporting that love.  Driving home from Estes that night we did so in beautiful silence filled with the love of all these people and we reached out and held hands.

Just shy of three weeks later we held hands again as our daughter was born.

Congratulations Anna and Josh!  May your life be filled with love, dinosaur, and pirate noises.

I call bull.

Couples should be able to pull from sources of inspiration within themselves and from the outside world without worrying if some fun idea has crossed the line from unique to trendy.  Kind of like how I tell my couples not to stress but perhaps more importantly not to stress if indeed they are stressing.  It’s enough to drive a sane person crazy.

This wedding was beautiful and personal.  Stephanie grew up literally down the street from the ceremony site.  The choice of the site was tied to those memories from years of spending time around those old walls.  Years where she grew from baby, to toddler, to child, to young woman, to grown woman.  Years where she could look out the windows of her house and see those walls bordered by the cliffs of red stone.  And now Stephanie can look out those same windows and say that’s where I married Wade.

Congratulations, Stephanie and Wade on the start of your marriage!!  We wish you all the happiness you so deserve.  Go Pokes!

You are truly an amazing little baby.  Your daddy and I still look at each other when you’re sleeping peacefully between us and ask; how did we get soo soo lucky?  We get to keep you, this insanely beautiful and awesome little being, forever.  Thank you for trusting us.

You’ve taught us so much in these first few months.  You’ve taught us to trust our instincts and to trust in what feels right.  And we thank you for that.  For it has given us the confidence to be the parents we want to be and embrace the child you are.  To trust in today instead of focusing so much on the future.

All month you’ve been making subtle and gradual movements toward milestones.  From those first couple smiles at the start of the month you’ve blossomed into one very smily baby.  Sometimes you give daddy a huge smile when you see his face or hear his voice in the evening and that absolutely makes his day.  You’ve moved beyond your first bits of baby babble and now carry on whole conversations punctuated by flailing limbs and increasingly louder shrieks.  You love it when we engage in your conversation and we gladly do so.  By now evenings have gotten much easier (though still not easy).  Daddy still wears you to sleep but generally you surrender to sleep pretty quickly.  You generally sleep soundly until about 4am and then move into a more restless state of sleep and more frequent feeding.  You love baths now.  Generally you chill out with your feet resting in the warm water and a warm washcloth over your body as we scrub, wash, and try out new hairdos with that wild hair.  Through the course of the month you’ve moved from a little bobble head baby to one with her head securely perched.  Good job!

Happy three months dearest River!  We love you so very much!

Mommy and Daddy