Day’s Verse:
Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.
John 1:3-5

Goodness, how time flies! I thought I’d just posted yesterday… It seems like barely have we gotten up and suddenly it’s afternoon and Benji’s awake and playful; and then evening has snuck up and it’s off to bed we go.

Typically, by the way, it’s off to bed we go quite early — between 8:00 and 9:00, with anything after 9:00 qualifying as Very Late. The beautiful thing about this, though, is that once Benji goes to sleep, he stays asleep for a good long time. Typically we’ll get him down, say, 8:00; he’ll wake up between 5:00 and 6:30 the next morning, not super fussy but definitely ready for a diaper change and a snack. Then he hits the sack for another two to four hours, no real fussing to speak of. This means that Ian and I sleep a full night almost every night, at least seven and sometimes as many as nine hours at a stretch. I haven’t slept so well in months, not since long before Benji was born, and frankly probably longer than that — how many adults actually sleep so long on a regular basis? That last month of pregnancy, sleeping just did not go well. Now I wake up needing to feed Benji or, if he’s asleep, pump; but that’s easily manageable.

All that to say I’m feeling infinitely more human than at any point in the last four months. Benji is a delightful baby, happy and playful, eager to engage and curious about everything (once he masters his own mobility, that’ll be a real problem), full of smiles and wild, squeaky noises. We’ve started joking that we thought we had a baby, but actually we have a dolphin. Exploring the higher range of his vocal chords brings Benji joy, clearly, but it’s a bit hard on our ears when he’s near our heads. Sometimes I find myself almost at a loss for what to do with Benji when he’s awake: All that night-time sleeping means that, although he still naps, nap time tends to stay short, and he spends much more of the day awake.

So:

• I read him books (he gets all excited when I pull out a book, whacking the pages and sometimes petting them when there are fuzzy inserts)
• I sing The Wheels on the Bus (including the Ninjas on the Bus, the Bunnies on the Bus, the Snakes on the Bus, and anything else I can think of),
• I show him shiny objects, like serving spoons, and let him play with them,
• I stack block towers and wait while he knocks them over,
• I lay him in his box and dangle objects above him for him to bat at with his hands

We end up singing lots of silly songs, including lots of perversions of decent songs that just turn silly when you sing them in a baby context.

In a way he’s also getting less mobile, because he naps in his crib, and if we’re out, he wants to stay awake to see what’s cookin’. So if I want to do errands, it’s got to be in that short period after a nap when he’s awake and happy, or I have to find somebody else (read: Daddy! Grandparents!) to watch him. It’s more difficult, in a way, but also better because it means Benji is turning into a real human being, and that’s a change I love to watch and participate in.

Although it’s much harder than I expected, I’m also finding that I love being Benji’s Mommy much more than I expected, too. Every smile, giggle, or delighted vocalization pays back for the urp-ups, the poopy diapers, the exhaustion. Three months is infinitely better than two months, too. Thank goodness we’re done with that stage. Onward and upward!