Eight, nine, ten, eleven months

Dear Fife,
 
Can I say that maybe I don't write about you as much because I'm too busy enjoying you? I think it's at least partly true; I find myself enjoying your babyhood more than I have in the past. It's also just that three kids and a bigger job keeps you busy in general. Sometimes I start a draft for your monthiversary but don't get far enough to publish, but in any case I make lists in my head as the months go by.

So now you are almost a year old; before that happens I will add to my fragmented unpublished notes [in italics] and look at the pictures and try to remember.

Eleven months:
This is now! For a few more days. At some point over the last several months you learned to say more words: In addition to Mama, we have Dada, Ca for Cat and Kiss, Dah! for dog, and sometimes Ba or Nana for Banana. Also, the milk sign with one fist and two, as the situation calls for. Still scooting, much faster, and now standing for very short bursts; I don't think crawling is in the cards. I finally started putting your hair up in a ponytail to get it out of your face; with that, your round cheeks and your sticking out ears, two separate people have compared you lovingly to a baby troll (I hope when you grow up you think that's as funny as we do).

You love the cold water from the pool or a lake, or especially the Jamison Fountain, but you can't stand the bath. Also, shoes--you can't stand shoes.

Ten months:
[At ten months you love to feed yourself. You devour whole bananas that I've partially peeled (and if I take my eyes off you sometimes you also devour part of the peel in your haste--it's not uncommon to find you happily diving into the banana from the side). You gnawed on ribs for the Fourth of July]; you love fists full of sweet potato or sticky rice. Also slices of peach, mango seeds with a circle of flesh, and anything you see on your brother or sister's plate.

Nine months:
I wrote nothing down about this month but I'll tell you clearly what the best thing was: you started cocking your head to the side, looking for a new take on the world. You'd turn it very severely and look at us and smile, and then one day Lucy said that it was just your superpower--that when you cocked your head to the side you could see everyone's weaknesses. And just like that your smile seemed more knowing, and we were glad you couldn't tell us what you saw.

I think this was also the month when you also started scooting, first dragging your legs around like they were dead weight, then at some point realizing that they might do a little pushing too. 

Eight months: 
[Eight months finds you screaming, shrieking at the top of your lungs.] This shrieking went on for awhile. It was a a preview for us, opening a window into what you like when you aren't willing to go with the flow. Which mostly you still are, you are a lovely and flexible third child, except when you want something you want it NOW and you want ONLY that thing and woe unto us if we don't know what it is.


We love you so much baby Fife, almost a baby no more!

Love,
Mama

Fife and her daddy

Fife and Shaggy from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.

friday cute shot

seven months

 Dear Fife,

Before you turn eight months I have to write this down. There is one thing in particular I want to remember about you at seven months: One day, when I was nursing you before bed, you finished eating and turned your head down instead of up, burying your face in the crook of my elbow. Your dad came in and you raised your head like a person woken from deep concentration; you looked at him and smiled, then went back to where you were. Oscar and Lucy came in at one point, jumping on the bed and laughing. You looked up, then went back to your place.

I didn't move, I didn't want to break the moment. You stayed like that for a long time, at least 20 minutes, just quietly snuggling into my arm.

Love,
Mama

friday cute shot

hide and seek

This reminds me of a similar set I took of Lucy at this age.

six months

Dear Filomena,

You turned six months in Hawaii, land of the clearing-up-eczema and ever-present mangoes. This is you at six months:

• You flip over in your crib onto your stomach, but you can't get back on your back. Sometimes you cry for help, sometimes you just go back to sleep.
• You like every food we have given you so far, including banana, sweet potato, mango, avocado, white beans, black beans, and kale.
• You growl like a pirate (see "mama" video for evidence), but the pirate talk is already starting to give way to shrieking when we are too slow to give you what you want.
• Your ears, your ears!
• You give us all kisses, all the time, grabbing whatever you can hold and pulling our faces close to your wide-open mouth.
• You chew on everything but you still have no teeth.
• Your sister makes you laugh when she gives you finger guns and a goofy smile, or when she climbs up the doorways.
• Your brother makes you laugh when he pounds your stomach like a drum.

We love you bunches!

Love,
Mama

mama[mamamamama]

In Hawaii one morning Fife said her first word:

Mama[mamamamama] from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.


The other kids were beyond thrilled, telling all the strangers we passed on the street. They wanted to have a party, a first word party, and Lucy made a sand cake:

buried, part 2

five months

Dear Fife,

Three and four months went by without a word from me here, sorry, but there were plenty of words in your ears. And now, five months! Five months has you growling like a pirate, and giggling like a sweet little girl. Oscar calls you "our squirrel friend" and "cutie mootie" and hasn't stopped smothering you with snuggles, but you rarely mind. Lucy plies you with finger guns and jumping jacks; your face lights up whenever she comes around.

Also when Daddy walks into the room, or me; you have a fabulous open-mouthed smile that involves your cheeks and your eyes and a whole lot of tongue. And often growling, as I think I mentioned. I looked this up on the internet today, "my five-month old growls like a pirate," and wouldn't you know there was a whole community of mothers saying the same thing. One said her daughter growled so much she considered throwing her a pirate-themed birthday party when she turned one, which I am now putting on my list of things to maybe do.

You're sitting up for brief snippets of time now; you grab your feet now and roll side to side, but you haven't made it all the way over just yet. We fed you some bananas this week; you thought they were pretty good.

You love the water--we took you to the pool for the first time last weekend and you had a really good time. You splashed and floated on my shoulder, turning your head to feel the water in your eyes.

You're a fun one to have around!

We love you,
Mama

portrait of fife in her daddy's hat (by oscar)

heard on the street

"She loves embroidering me with her slobbery kisses!"

-Lucy, on Fife before bedtime

giraffes!

this one likes daddy's guitar

now and then, thanksgiving edition

Having a lot of kids has made me appreciate doing the same things over and over.

Oscar, 7.5 months, Thanksgiving 2012

Filomena, 2.5 months, Thanksgiving 2015

Rocky and Lucy, 4 months, Thanksgiving 2009

Rocky and Filomena, 2.5 months, Thanksgiving 2015

the birth of baby Filomena

The baby was due on August 22. When I hit 10 days over I really couldn't believe I was still pregnant--Oscar was 10 days late, so that had been the outer reaches of my expectations. In no world did I expect to get all the way to September. But here I was, still pregnant, so pregnant that people at the grocery store started asking me if I was carrying twins.

So pregnant. Two days before she was born; since I
work from home I wanted to send some proof to
my colleagues that I was, in fact, still gestating.

The upside was that the heat wave that lasted all summer was finally on hiatus, and since I had pretty much transitioned my projects at work and stopped taking on new projects I had a lot of time for slowly walking to the coffee shop, afternoon naps, and acupuncture appointments.

After barely making it to the hospital with Oscar we had planned for a homebirth this time around; 42 weeks is the upper limit for when homebirth is still safe/legal, so the midwives scheduled me for an induction at the hospital on Friday morning at 8am. On Thursday morning I tried one round of an "herbal induction protocol" which involves swallowing yucky things at 15 minute intervals for 4 hours. No contractions resulted, and I decided not to go for round two. By Thursday evening I was frustrated but resigned; I was bummed that once again birth was not going anything like we had planned, but looking forward to laboring in a tub at the hospital and finally getting this baby born.

I had collected some inspiration throughout the pregnancy and written down parts of poems or paragraphs that I thought might help during the birth; I packed those in the hospital bag along with my robe and headphones.

I set my alarm for 6:30am on Friday and made plans for my parents to pick up the kids; at 4am I woke up with a strong contraction. I waited for about thirty minutes, timing contractions that were already only 5 minutes apart, then woke up Shaggy and called the midwives and my mom.

The midwives came and set up their things; my mom came and got the kids; I rocked on an exercise ball; I got in the shower; I got on the bed and worked on letting go.

Your child is a boat on the ocean. There are storms and rain and fog. You cannot control the course. Every time you exhale, the boat is carried safely toward the horizon, its distant harbor and home.

You are the breeze.^

-Karen Maezan Miller

 
It came time to push but nothing was happening; I was at a loss as this was the part I had been really good at before. The midwives thought maybe the baby had turned face up; we found out later that she had just decoded to come out with her elbow wrapped around her face. Coaching through several different labor positions and extreme effort followed (my biceps of all things were sore for days afterward); the midwives kept checking the baby's heartbeat and telling me it sounded great, but that just made me feel like the baby wasn't trying nearly as hard as I was.

Finally her head was out, and with the next set of pushes her shoulders followed. I could hear her crying, but we weren't quite done with each other: the midwife said I'm sorry, but you're going to have to keep pushing--she's not all the way out yet. My giant baby required three sets of final pushes to get her whole body out.

And then she was born.

How could we be replete
with the flesh of ripe tomatoes, the unique
scent of their crushed leaves. It would take many
births to be done with the thatness of that.

Oh blame life. That we just want more.

-Enough, by Ellen Bass

at the beach

How these months as a mother of three go by! We went to the beach with my parents back in October. It was really relaxing, especially because there was no tsunami, but had there been we were relieved to see that evacuation instructions suggested everyone come to our floor on the hotel, so we would have been as safe as it gets.

While we were there Fife started consolidating her naps, and also falling asleep at 7:30 for the whole night. I think Nana is some kind of baby whisperer, but fortunately, for the most part, the schedule has stuck.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Anyone who knows Lucy knows she scatters art everywhere she goes, like some sort of glitter monster; this was a drawing I found hanging up on the deck railing at Nana and Papa's room. She sid it was an invitation to the spiders to come and build their webs there.

two months

Dear Fife,

Two months! That means my maternity leave is three-fourths over; in a week we head to Virginia to celebrate Thanksgiving and when we come back I go back to work. I'm not really dreading it; we've had some good time together and working from home makes things pretty easy, plus I'll only have two full weeks and two partial weeks until Christmas, so it should make for a good easing in.

As I suspected at the end of last month, just when you began to get a little bit boring you started smiling at us and we got excited about you all over again. The kids still fight over who you are looking at more, and it's all the more desperate now because of the smiles; you and Lucy have long conversations and Oscar gives you endless kisses all over your face.

After your behemoth start in life you have slowed down considerably: at your two month check-up you were 12lbs, 4.5 oz (75th percentile). The doctor says you are probably just finding your proper place on the chart. Like your brother and sister, you remain extremely tall: 25 inches puts you into what they call the 100th percentile, which I'm still pretty sure is impossible, but I take it to mean that at the moment you are the tallest 2-month-old in the entire world.

We all really like you. You are still so nice to hold, just really the perfect heft. Your long hair is styling itself into a wavy mohawk in the new Fall rain. You fall asleep for the night between 7 and 8, just like your brother and sister, giving us a few lovely hours every evening to just be grownups. Everyone that holds you says you smell really good.

It's true, you really do.

Love,
Mama

oscar and filomena

sisters

Left: Lucy, October 2009
Right: Filomena, October 2015


Also, in revisiting the archives I see that I did this exact same post at almost the exact same age with Oscar. Now and then and then!