Six Monthiversary Anew

Dear Cormac,

Well dude, today was crazy, was it not? You and your sister have (hopefully) hit the bottom of your behavioral spiral down to what I can only describe as the human child equivalent of sad drunk penguins, fighting to play a single ukulele.  The volume/frustration/barf output parallels are uncanny, really, and as much as I love you crazy doodles, I am glad you're both feeling peaceful now. I mean, you have to be if you're asleep, right? 

You know, when I first found out that you were on your way, I was very sure that I knew you already; that, as your  mother, I could feel who you were through my skin. I knew you were a boy, I knew you'd be my good sleeper, and that you would be calm and sweet. I knew this the way that I knew your sister was a girl before I met her, the way that I knew your dad was supposed to share his smiles and his hugs and his last name with me before we'd even known each other a week.  

I could list the bad things I didn't know about (take for example, the general relativity of the concept of "calm"), but let's not focus on the negative here.  Today is your yesterday was your day of half-babyness, and I don't want to bring us down any more than I already did with that unstable avian comment. The moral of this story is that you are all those things.

You crack jokes with your little raised eyebrows at skeptical situations. You can crawl, but you don't because doing so would require that you remove both fists from your mouth, so you move in these lopsided half-circles like a one-oared canoe.  You don't really cry outside of sleep battles, but you are so loud. The other day I heard you grunting and happily screeching from the living room while I was in the garage, in my car, with the windows up.  To be fair, it's a thin wall, but dude - you're loud. 

I started writing this letter to you three days ago, knowing I would need a lot of time. On three separate occasions, I have written and deleted the comment, "you are sleeping now," because each time you woke up a few seconds later. Ahem. You are currently lying on a blanket next to me on the floor, and the last time I wrote that phrase was ten minutes ago. 

It's good to hang one-on-one like this though. You and your sister passed out this evening at 4:30, and I was really discouraged to learn that it seemed like you were both pretty serious about calling it a day and actually going to sleep for the night (hah - "the night"). Iris is, of course, dead to the world for at least eight hours, and while that's not great for my 11pm futureself, I got to chill for a couple of hours with you on the floor while you sang songs and played with my eyebrows. 

I know I won't always do the greatest job of slowing down enough to give you my undivided attention like this, but I hope you know that you are so worth every ounce of love we squeeze you with. Your babyhood is no less precious to us simply because we've done this once before and you are no less special because you happened to be the little brother.

(Hey, I'm trying to make sure you get equal representation in the photo annals, but your sister WAS sitting on my back, hanging from my neck when these were taken. Hope you didn't need really good photo history of your forehead at this age.)

You have now entered the second half of the first year of your life. You love hugs and your squishy baby doll and your big sister. You are known as Cormac, Mac, Cormie (God help us), Big Daddy C, Daddy Mac, and of course, DJ Squizzles. Someday you will be taller than me, shaving your face, and trying to convince your sister to buy you beer (which will not be happening will it, Iris Luella? No it will not, chicklets. No it will not). Remember that to your dad and me, you will always be our baby, our Cormac Michael, named after your grandfathers and born on yet another auspicious Thursday to tearfully grateful parents.