A Bear in the House



A bear asleep at the zoo

  Dear Charlie,


Right now, at eight months old, I pretty much want to eat you up at all times and frequently take nibbles off of multiple chubby, soft, delicious baby body parts. Some of my favorites are your cheeks, your toes, your thighs and that little spot just under your ear. Mmm…mmm.

You should also probably know that you can’t get enough of me either. In fact, whenever I walk into your room to get you up from a nap, you nearly break your neck to get a good look at me and when you do get a glimpse of me, you slam your head into the mattress and writhe around like something in a Madonna video. Just pure baby cuteness.

You are not crawling yet, but you’re close. You are perfecting yoga poses at the moment. You are excellent at Cobra, where you push your head and chest off the ground to beam at anybody who will look your way, and from there, you either move into an advanced belly-on-the-ground swimming/skydiving move where you flap, flap, flap in place, or you move directly into a very pretty Downward-Facing Dog. Recently your Down Dog seems to be morphing into what could be moving towards Half-Moon Pose where you keep your arms on the ground with your butt in the air and lift one leg off the ground. If you could just get those hands off the ground, you’d be in Warrior III, or I suppose if you just got your leg up a little higher you’d be in Standing Split. It’s all very sophisticated. You are also pretty skilled at Table Top, where you rock back and forth on your knees, but no actual crawling yet. That’s okay; I’ve started to move on from my hopes that you’ll crawl and eventually walk someday to researching how to raise you as a Yogi or perhaps a Buddha. (Since this was originally written, three days ago, you’ve started to do The Worm! An awesome party trick, which I hope you will take with you to many a wedding reception.)

Not only are you finding your inner Yogi, you are also finding you’re voice. This past weekend in church, right in the middle of poor Father Marty’s homily, you belted out a long string of “Dah-dah-dahs” which echoed quite nicely off the cathedral walls. Between Yoga and your attempt to take over the homily, it seems you are quite spiritual. Good boy. Teach us something.

In case you haven’t noticed, you have become know as The Bear. It started with Daddy calling you Charlie Bear and then it became The Bear and sometimes Bear-bees. You seem to answer gladly to all of them and greet them all with a wide, gummy grin that closes your eyes and tilts your head back with a kind of pure joy that only a baby can produce, that all adults wish they still understood.

You and Finny LOVE each other. Everyone keeps telling me that someday you’ll be beating each other up and fighting over everything. It’s hard to imagine right now because right now, you simply crack each other up. Last night was a video camera moment for the two of you. Finny watched me cracking you up as I tickled you to distract you from the fact that I had to wipe your nose and said, “I…got your boogies!” When he finished his dinner, he promptly ran over to lay with you on your playmat and also wanted to “Get Your Boogies!” You squealed and squealed. And that made Finny squeal and squeal. And all of it had me in tears. And then Daddy came home and he got in on the action. Fun times, The Bear, and you were at the center of it.

You are a big boy, Bear-bees. You will no doubt be bigger than your big brother some day. You are now eating three meals a day and seem to love everything from pears to squash to avocado. You are also starting to drink more formula as I have begun to slowly wean you. It’s a bittersweet process, weaning. There is joy and relief that comes from regaining my body, not filling up with milk all the time. But there is a tug of sadness that comes from realizing you are getting to be an old baby, and that soon we will no longer have that snuggly closeness that comes with breastfeeding.

The number one compliment you receive from friends and strangers is on the gorgeous state of your Frohawk. Pop-pop Finnessy keeps asking me if I style your hair like that on purpose. Nope. You’ve just been blessed with a mohawk full of tight little red-tinted ringlets. It’s nothing short of awesome.

The number two compliment you receive is about how cool, calm and collected you always seem to be. You and I don’t get a lot of alone time, Bear, and when we do, I’m usually trying furiously to get dinner prepped or a bill paid or some other nonsense before your brother gets up from his nap. You fend for yourself a lot of the time, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry you don’t get the undivided attention that Finny got. It’s just not in the cards for the second child. But, maybe the result is this easy-breezy attitude you seem to have adopted. You go with it, Bear-bees. You roll with the punches. You sit in your stroller, you bounce in the Johnny Jumper, you suck on whatever you can find on the family room floor (don’t worry, these are usually toys planted by me that are ideal for you to suck on), and you do it all with a grin. You’re a happy baby, Bear, with or without a ton of attention, and if you can keep this quality as you grow up, it will serve you well.

Well, you’ll be up soon, so I should wrap this up. It’s taken me over a week to write! One last thing though. I love you, Charlie Bear. More and more each day. Didn’t know it was possible. You bring it out in me. In all of us. It’s just so much fun to have a bear in the house.

Love,

Mommy

Yoga Move #3:  Table Top

Yogi Bear moving into Cobra

Dr. Evil Bear



Get Your Boogies!