Four Months

Dear Lucy,

Today you are four months plus one day old. We are in Virginia for Thanksgiving, and you are acquainting your East Coast family with all the new charms and skills you have developed in the two months since they last saw you.

Yesterday evening you rolled over in your grandparents living room, one smooth and very intentional motion. It wasn't your very first roll, but it was your most impressive, and your very first with an audience. After the roll the audience applauded enthusiastically, and you, surprised either by your abilities or the noise they produced in others, promptly proceeded to cry.

This last month has been a good one--you've been increasingly alert and interactive, and when you're in a good mood you are more and more fun to be around. This month has also been a challenge as sleep has become more of a battle--maybe the world has become so interesting to you that you're less willing to give it up lightly. I say you're stubborn when I'm frustrated and tired; when I'm feeling proud I say strong willed.

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good she was very very good
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Sometimes at night when I go to bed and can't quite fall asleep, I peek at you lying next to me in the crib, and think of how large the world has become. Before you, I was the center of my own universe, and my universe was a cocoon: Shaggy + Amber = Love. Now that you are here, the universe has expanded to include not only you, but everyone who came before me and everyone who will now come after. I was a daughter, and am now a mother; will someday be a grandmother, and someday forgotten, but now and forever embedded in the story of the world.  My life is now so obviously part of a long chain of lives, and the world is so big is so lovely and almost crushing.

In the months before you were born your daddy said, "What if I love her so much it breaks my heart?"

When I carried you inside me my body expanded to fit you, and when you were ready to be born my body expanded to let you out. Now that you're here our lives and our hearts have expanded to make room for you too.  Every time I think I can't possibly get any bigger I somehow do. You are the big bang that started our universe shooting out in exciting and scary and unknowable directions.

Can we expand big enough to fit all that there is?

Happy four months, little girl. We love you unknowable amounts.

Love,
Mama