Dear Julien … Letters to my second son.

Dear Julien,

On Christmas Eve, you surprised us by rolling over from front to back for the first time. You seemed just as surprised at the shift in orientation as we were. You’ve repeated the trick just once since then, though you’re showing signs of wanting to roll both ways. Mostly, you want to be on the go, I can see it in your eyes and the way you bounce up and down eagerly, but you haven’t put crawling together yet. You keep trying, but you kick your legs when you’re in superman mode which leaves your feet flailing for purchase and you don’t kick the same way when you’re pushed up properly on your arms.

You’ll figure it out eventually though, I’m sure, and that has me getting down on all fours to check the baby-safeness of the house at random intervals, much to Vic’s curiosity.

It’ll all come in time, sweetheart.

Love, Mommy

Dear Julien,

This week you found your feet and every time I change your diaper or put you in clothes that don’t have footies attached, you reach for your toes and try to bring them up to jam into your mouth. Though you can’t use your feet to move around yet, you are starting to be mobile on your own: you scoot backwards on your tummy when we put you down on a quilt or blanket for tummy time.

Just this evening, you’ve scooted from your Dad’s knee to underneath my computer chair three times. Each time I pick you up and put you back near your Dad, within 10 minutes you’re back under my chair, grunting happily. It’s really cute to watch and to listen to. You’re really, really happy with this accomplishment and seem to be having a great time boogieing about.

You Are Feeling Sleeeepy

Originally uploaded by littleowl.

Dear Julien,

At four months, you are quite the armful at just under 15 and a half pounds and getting longer and stronger all the time. Your feet are catching up to the rest of you, to the point that you can wear some of your brother’s old socks that were meant to be worn by a child of a year old. This is good because you’ve got chubby little legs and a lot of the socks I bought for you before you were born squeeze your ankles too tightly and give you red marks.

You’re sitting up without support for more and more seconds put together, though you still need to lean forward quite a bit to sit up. You like tummy time pretty well and will put up with it a lot longer than your big brother would. I can put your quilt down for you and you’ll lie there pushing up happily on your arms for 20-30 minutes. After that you want to go back onto your back for a while, but you’re not quite able to roll there on your own. We play rolling games to show you how to do it and get you interested in the motion.

Your teeth are still hanging out the same stage that they were, pushing on your gums, the front two are through, but not pushing up significantly. I can feel the hard ridges with my finger, but I wouldn’t say that you’ve properly cut either tooth yet.

You continue to enjoy the sling, though you prefer to be carried facing outward now so you can see the world. I only carry you facing inward now when we walk home from daycare so that you can fall asleep more comfortably. I carried you facing out the other day and you fell asleep with your head hanging forward over the edge of the sling. I twisted the tails up into a sausage and tucked it in across the front of the sling to prop your chin up and that was better, but overall I think it’s comfier for you if you can rest your head on my chest and sleep that way. You always fall asleep on that walk – your third nap of the afternoon, so we’ll keep walking the way we have been for a while longer.

Speaking of naptimes and eating, you had a massive growth spurt in the last two weeks and went back to eating every hour at night for a few days. This was very tiring for me both in lost sleep and in the need to produce more milk. You went from wanting 12-14 ounces a day while I’m gone to 14-16 and used up all our frozen stash. Yikes! I think we’ve managed to smooth things out now and there’s a small backlog of milk in the freezer again, but we don’t have the major stash that we used to. If I can just stay ahead of you for 2 more months, we should be all right though until you start solids at 6 months.

Sleepwise, you tend to sleep a 4-5 hour stretch still in the early part of the night and continue to be restless in the later part of the night, though last night was a bit of an exception and you slept more of a stretch between 1am and 6am than you have before. Naps are all over the map. I think you’re taking 2-3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. They seem to only be about an hour long, so I’m hoping that at some point in the next year you’ll consolidate those naps into a 2-3 hour stretch.

I get constant remarks about how cheerful, calm and alert you are. You really impress people with your observant gaze and ready smile. I hope to see that smile the most often of all your cute expressions, because it just touches me so deeply and makes my heart sing.

I love you little man.

Mommy