Dear Sajan,
It’s your first 4th of July weekend! Today you turn two months old. Unfortunately it’s gloomy in Austin this year. Huge rainstorms are passing over Central Texas, so our weekend has mostly been spent hanging out together inside.
When we last we wrote about you had just you passed two weeks. It’s a mind squeeze to believe that you’ve now lived 4x that amount. One day, we sat up in bed after you had slept and looked through early photos of you in the dark. We panicked! Where had time gone?
The two month period marks the end of a few things. The end of our newborn bubble, the end of mom’s maternity leave, the end of princess treatment. On the one hand, mama is looking forward to meeting her Function baby again. On the flip, we have so cherished our time and could live in this bliss a little longer.
The bubble was showered with nourishment from family and well wishes and presents from friends, ultimate pampering. It’s been our little escape from reality where we’ve focused on bonding with you, keeping you safe, healthy, well-fed, and watching your frail body and neck gain some strength and fat. And it’s felt like a limbo state - neither here nor there - catering nonstop to your every next need.
You’ve changed so much babu. By the way, we have at least ten nicknames for you, sorry if it’s hard to keep track. Among them are Manu, Tinku, Chin-Chin, Chinny, Chinu, Bumpu, Mr. Fatty, and Chunku. None of these have anything to do with your name. They are simply spur of the moment blurts based on how you make us feel then and there.
Today’s headline is that you’ve become a chunk our son. Fat rolls have appeared everywhere on your body. Enough fat to make several stews, dumplings, croissants, skewers, and other delicacies. In fact we are pretty sure your body composition is 15% ghee. Your neck is barely a neck. It’s a never ending series of hard-to-clean smelly rolls. A cave, really.
A middle of the night change
Some other notable changes since we last wrote:
- You learned to poop! I’m sure a bit uncomfortable at first but you did it.
- You’ve started bottle feeding! Which means dada finally get to feed you! Our freezer is filling up with mom’s milk. Which has forced us to organize it!
- You made you first road trip. It was a two hour journey to College Station for Father’s Day weekend.
- You’ve really enjoyed being carried over the shoulder. Lying down doesn’t cut it anymore.
- You saw your other grandparents! They loved spending time with you.
- You are smiling soooo much, and have just started to babble. “Ha kuh!”
- You now only wake up once during the night (mostly), which is so nice for us. Once you slept almost nine hours at a stretch. Mom thought something was wrong. It wasn’t.
- We started retiring most of your newborn clothes, which we feel really sad about.
- You witnessed some pretty cool sporting events - the NBA finals and a really great French Open final between Alcaraz and Sinner.
- You got your passport. World, here we come.
- You’re not so fragile anymore! We are much less worried about hurting you.
Rocking the cottage core
Time is a funny thing. Two months feels like both an eternity and also “We have six more such stretches till a year!“. While you’ve grown, we realize you’re still such a small boy. You don’t have peripheral vision yet, so every time we slip in and out of your frame it’s a surprise. Your whole body can still fit neatly on our chests. You don’t have anything close to a routine. You’ve maybe met 10 people in your life. And we still get to decide where and when you move (“stop manhandling me dad!!!”). You’re our big tiny boy.
We continue to enjoy noticing all the little things about you. They could fill a book! Like how your forehead is covered with small hairs. Your emerging bright smile. Did you know your eyelashes are thick and long like dada’s? Yours ears are covered with rabbit fuzz. Your eyelids are still thin enough to see the veins within. And today there’s the scratch mark you made near your eye. We love the way you clench your fists tight to your chest when you’re soothed with a pacifier or milk. And even as you wail, we stare into the void of your open mouth, noticing the white milk crusted on your tongue, your empty gums which will someday fill in, and the pounding vibration of your tongue. Your grunts reflect your first outward emotion - frustration! And we’re just begun being able to short circuit your fussiness with big and funny faces.
Being your parents has been an immersive experience. One day we realized this is the most consecutive time we’ll ever spend with you. Isn’t that wild? And this week marks a new era for us with the arrival of your nanny Lupita, we hope you like her. Over the next few months you’ll be meeting even more and more people. As your aperture starts to open we are reminded that you don’t belong to us, you belong to the world.
We’re finding a lot of value in taking our own space and time so that we can come back stronger parents for you. So far this has been date nights, working out, and early mornings when possible. There are also other lessons emerging which we think will help us be the best parents we can: not comparing, not letting your emotions become ours, and not letting you become our entire identity.
Most of all since you’ve been here the very idea of life has come into even clearer focus. The entire span of it, from beginning to end feels more real than it ever has. Especially the temporariness of everything. And the importance of being present despite there always being a next thing to do. You see, whether we like it or not, everything will change soon.
Love, Mom and Dad
