5 Months

Dear Mom,

Can you believe Francine is already 5 months old? That cliche about time flying is so true, more than ever right now. Alex took her to the pediatrician and she's weighing in at 14 lbs 10 oz.! She either shrunk or their measurements are imprecise because she's recorded as 25.25 inches long. That puts her in the 25-50th percentile for size. But she's got a pinhead, like you. She's just barely outgrown her newborn hats!

I think about you often, some times more than others. I think of you when I feel like I need my own mom, just a big squeeze and encouragement that I'm doing just great. I could have used a big hug and kiss last week after totally melting down at work. As you well know, I HATE crying in public, let alone in front of my colleagues, but I just couldn't keep it under wraps any longer. The stress just oozed out of my being in the form of heaving sobs. "I just don't know if the VA is the right place for me." "I'm trying so hard to compensate for some of my weaker clinical skills with being flexible and agreeable." " It's so hard to work full time as a new mom." "I'm just SO tired!" I wanted to say, "poor me, and I don't even have a mom."

I also wonder about what your role would be in our family today. Weekly dinners? Telephone calls and daily texts? Childcare support? Laughing about it all? Or maybe just about Dave Barry's perspective of childrearing. That's my fantasy mother, of course. Who knows, maybe you would have gone back to school or amped up a career or travelled the world or been unavailable in one of a million other possible ways.

If you're on my mind, I reflect mostly on how your life must have been when you were at this similar stage. You didn't have to work, but was Dad gone a lot? Did you ever have to pump? How did you feel about Meemaw and Granny? When you nursed in the night did you use the rocker? Were you comfortable leaving your baby? Did you like being home full time? And how did you spend your days?

But back to the Bean. A little bit more of her "person" presents itself each day. She is beginning to develop some unique and distinct traits. She love love loves music. She recently started "singing" along to the radio in the car. Sometimes I turn down the volume, to try to decipher whether she's fussing or cooing. She'll stop vocalizing, and then start making happy noises again when I turn the volume back up. She loves looking at faces. She's got a good stare - sort of makes you feel like she's reading your soul. She would definitely win a staring contest. I'd bet a pretty penny on it. She likes touching faces, too. I call this "Helen Kellering." It's as though she's really trying to know you, to memorize your face - what it looks like and how it feels.

She's quite the baby yogi. She can do a sphinx pose when on her belly. And she can do a mean "happy baby" when I change her diaper. She's so flexible she can put her toes right into her mouth. In fact, there's nothing she'd rather do than eat her feet. She even whines when she can't quite reach because of her cloth diaper, or when her foot slips back to its native position on the far end of her body. She can roll front to back, but hasn't even attempted back to front. She's still not a lover of tummy time, so why would she purposefully roll that way? I guess she's motivated to get off that darn tummy of hers because by golly she needs to eat her feet.

She can hold her own bottle when it's almost empty. Make breastmilk cheese on the folds-within-folds of her neck rolls. Giggle. Alex says she has a tiny little dimple on her right cheek. But I'm not convinced it's not just cellulite. She sleeps with her arms behind her head and her legs swaddled. She can ask a question with just her raised eyebrows. She will smile and be happily held by strangers. She can reach for interesting colorful objects (like my Tillamook ice cream carton). And she smiles at passers by when being carried in the Beco facing out.

You'd be so endeared by seeing Dad with Francie. You'd be proud of what a good grandfather he is revealing himself to be. Without any cueing at all, he uses a higher pitched voice and brushes Francie's soft, chubby baby cheeks with his hands. He lets her chew on his fingers and even sits in the back of the car, just BDA and his Magoo, when we all go out to dinner. But the problem is, he's the ONLY person that she cries at. When she looks at his face she gets this big pouty lip and bursts in to tears. The first time it happened I didn't think much of it. The second time it was funny. The third time, less so. And now? Just plain worrisome. I don't know what it is about him that makes her cry, but the other evening it made me sad too. Al and Brian are all I've got, and I'll be damned if my baby doesn't simply adore my father, especially in your absence, Mom. I'm afraid she's getting conditioned to cry at him, like Pavlov's dog and the bell. The other day he sais, "What's wrong? I'm your friend. I'm on your team. Even when you're a teenager, I'll still be on your team." You'd be proud.

I love and miss you. Mostarooni.