An Open Letter to My Four Month Old Son

Dear Samson,

I'm pretty sure you can't read yet, so you haven't been keeping up-to-date on my blog. Let me just tell you, you have been just a little bit difficult to deal with this week. Like other 4 month olds, you demand constant interaction, never-ending entertainment. In the two hour periods between naps, I dance, sing, make nonsense sounds, funny faces, parade an endless stream of toys 8 to 12 inches above your head then do it all again within grasping distance. We go for walks, drives, trips to the dog park, baby boot camp, playgroups and Gymboree. We play on the special baby-only carpet on the living floor, on your changing table, in your crib, on my bed, and on the sofa.

YOU EXHAUST ME.

Sometimes you reward me with a barrage of humongous smiles, or you'll do something new and exciting like try to eat my nose. Seriously, just the other day you acted as though you were trying to soak my nose in venomous juices so that you could LITERALLY DEVOUR MY NOSE. Now that you're starting to reach for toys and other things we're achieving a level of more or less constant cuteness. There's nothing like trying to watch a baby stuff a toy in his mouth when the toy is easily the side of his head. But usually, if I stop for even a second, you just sort of make this dying frog noise, which isn't so bad, but it more often not develops into a loud, screechy, whine. Which is annoying times 1,000. I know it's your way of telling me that you're bored or frustrated, but holy crap, kid, you're killing me here.

The noise you make is like one part amphibian, one part reptile and one part alien. I wonder if this is what baby dinosaurs sounded like? That would explain why they are extinct, their mothers probably got sick of that horrible noise and stepped on all of them.

The incessant whining really came to a head this week, and with your father out of town on business, it was just a little bit harder to deal with (thank goodness for naps and grandparents). So I thought about it, and somewhere my brain put 2 and 2 together: your obvious state of fairly regular discomfort or anxiety, your over the top love of your hands and stuffing them (and anything else you can get your sticky little hands on) in your mouth, and the buckets o' drool you produce hourly--could you possibly be teething? Your grandma had mentioned how much you liked chewing on the handle of her spoon the other night..sure, why not? So I went to the fridge, got out a carrot, scrubbed it clean and gave it to you. It's cold and hard, and the right size for your little hand to hold.

Silence.

As you gummed the bejesus out of the carrot, I smiled smugly and patted myself on the back. It took me a little while, but I solved All That Whining. I was already planning my shopping trip to Target to buy carts full of refrigerated teething toys when you looked at me, realized I wasn't actively playing with you or entertaining you, and the noise making started right back up again. Pride goeth before a fall.

Between your high-energy needs and the constant nerve rattling noises you make, it's clear that I'm going to have to take up afternoon drinking.

Love,
Your Mom