The start of the holiday season marks six months since Sajan joined us! And rounds out our first year as Texas residents. As we bundle up for the winter, it’s a cozy time to reflect on these milestones for our family of three.
First: we are loving every moment and every day of parenthood. There wasn’t much in the before-times that’s compared to the daily joy of caring for our baby. The closest thing I can think of is playing innocently as a kid, or the early days of dating Pranitha. A big part of the joy is novelty through nurturing. There is just so much novelty that boredom doesn’t exist. It’s nice that this novelty come from nurture, rather than distraction. Like nurturing a garden or skill. Kids combine motion (so much to do), novelty (every day is an adventure), love, and ego (my kid). A powerful cocktail.
Since our last note at two months, Sajan has bloomed from a newborn into an averaged sized baby boy. He’s endlessly curious and his favorite phrases are “atha!” and “ba ba ba!“. He puts everything he sees into his mouth, which makes for exciting cinema and emphasizes how little his brain is. As our nanny Lupita often says: todo en la boca.
Sajan is now sleeping through the night, a big milestone that I now take for granted. Shoutout to Pranitha who still wakes up at five daily to pump. In month four we made a few big sleep changes in one fell swoop: we moved him into his own room, swapped bassinet to crib, and started sleep training all on the same weekend. The method we used is called graduated extinction, whereby cry intervals get progressively longer on each day. This method was remarkably efficient, taking three days to get 95%. Fast forward and he now sleeping ~7:30p-6:30a daily.
Sajan also begun making his away around town, mingling with adults and fellow babies at his favorite spots. He is a regular at story/song time at the Twin Oaks Library, where I now strum alongside the librarian to his favorite tunes (Baby Put Your Pants On, Wake Up Feet). And also splashes away every Monday in the pool at swim lessons in Westlake. He went on his first ever plane to Denver on Labor Day weekend (shoutout Cat and Jared and Damian!), and had loads of fun with his Oakland friends when the came to visit Austin in September. He also made some baby friends via PIP, the new parent small group we joined.
Sajan’s favorite songs of this era have been:
- The Happy Song by Imogen Heap (general favorite)
- Nindiya Re by Kaavish (bedtime song)
- Eidelweiss from Sound of Music (morning song)
Notably, Sajan has built a special relationship with his Aunt Jeevitha (Titi), who he has gotten to spent tons of time with in the past couple months. She is a pro at taking care of him (including expert at diapers and sleep), and making him giggle. Shout out Titi! Who by the way is pregnant herself, and is moving to Austin this week. All the aunt memes are showing up on the feed and are 100% accurate. Best one is a woman holding a baby and lamenting that her body changed. Baby in his head thinks: you’re not my mom, go work out 🤣. Looking forward, we are so thrilled to build a joint family in Austin.
Sajan just began eating solids (yay peanut butter, nay on carrots?). And when he’s drowsy sounds very, very constipated. As for us parents, it’s exciting to be out of the newborn phase. The role of parent now feels a mix of stand up comic (laughs) and ninja (make him sleep). It’s hard not to spend every moment smothering him with kisses.
In my twenties I read a book called Designing Your Life that helped shape how I wanted to spend my time. Now I’ve got a renewed optimism for the frontier ahead. Scheming has begun, possibilities are in the air. And with Sajan we get to design our life all over again.