The Z files: Month Two

Dear Zane,

Two months already? Wow. It is all going by so fast little one. And you are growing like a weed! You are already making your way into your 3-6 month wardrobe and some days I look at you and you look like a little boy instead of my newborn baby.

This month has been full of exploration. We have been getting out of the house together a lot more and I am finding much to my surprise that you, even at such a young age, are an incredible traveling companion and partner in adventure. I love taking you everywhere with me, seeing you experience things for the first time, watching your personality begin to unfold, being reminded to chill and be in the moment with you. We have taken walks, sat in coffee shops, gone grocery shopping, read books, gone out to eat....all things one might do with a new friend or companion. We are both exploring this big world together. And though I have seen it all before, I have never seen it before - not like this.

This month you have filled our hearts with your laughter. We have been reduced to goofy performing monkeys trying everything we can to squeeze one more laugh out of you. But just when we least expect it - there you go again. Your face lights up, your dimple deepens, and you just let loose. It is the most beautiful sound I have heard in my entire life. Really. Your laugh is both explosive as thunder and as gentle as a feather, all at once. What amazes me is how you will begin laughing in the midst of a deep sleep. I wonder what you could be dreaming of that gets you chuckling all to yourself. Already you have private jokes we could never understand.

This month has been a lot about togetherness. We are really together all the time now. Whether I am wearing you in the Ergo as I grocery shop or do laundry or whether we are reading books together or playing on your exercise mat on the floor. We are together. And already it is a slightly different togetherness than last month. You are more deliberate in your responses to me, we just feel more connected, and this month you began to hold onto me. When I am holding you now, you often reach your arm around behind me and pull yourself closer to me with all your mighty baby strength. And when you do this my heart explodes over and over again. You remind me in so many ways that we are in this together. And I, so determined in the past to forge my own way, so full of my own independence, could not be more thrilled to be a part of this pair that we are becoming.

This month has also been about small tastes of separation. We have had many visitors this month (your Nana, your Aunt DeeDee, and your cousins, various friends...with more to come). I admit it has been hard sharing you with these people who have come to love and adore you. Heck, sometimes it's hard to share you with your dad. But I am learning. And I am finding there is a different joy that comes from watching you delight in and interact with the people I love and who love me. As one friend pointed out, when you are being held by someone else, we literally get to see each other from a new angle. A bit of distance at times can be good. Last night I went out without you for the first time that didn't include a mad rushing around to run errands and get back to you as quickly as I could. I went out for a long dinner with a really dear friend. I resisted it at first. I thought about trying to come up with an excuse to bring you along. But instead, I took a deep breath, I spent the day snuggling with you, nursed you one last time, and then handed you over to your dad with dozens of kisses and promises to be home soon. And while at first it was hard to be out there in the world without you (is there a world without you?), slowly it got a little easier. I knew you were safe and loved with your daddy and I knew I was being filled up in ways that would allow me to return to you with more to give. I looked forward to bringing home more of myself to share. Still, as I walked through the door at the end of the evening - I have never been more excited to be home. And it was all I could do not to actually run to where you were. I wonder if your first ventures into the world without me will be much the same.

My heart has stretched this month and I sense it will only continue to stretch further and wider until perhaps it rips wide open. It is stretching to make space for you, for you in all your sweetness and light, for you in all your bigness, for you when we are together, for thoughts of you when we are apart. There is so much to hold onto but so little I can actually hold. Each day dances past and slips out of reach. Each milestone of development eclipsed by the next. We are finding our way, the two of us, the three of us. Finding our way into this bumpy world as a pair, as a threesome - as a family. And I want you to know that I will always be here for you to hold onto, as long as you need, whenever you need it, no matter what. But I will also try hard to let go when I need to, to let you venture out into the world, into your relationships - without me. And I will try to remember to be filled up in other places too, so that I always have more to bring home to you and to your dad.

Maybe that's what it means to be a family. Each of us holding onto one another and being there for each other to hold onto, but also each of us going out into the world, into our experiences, and bringing home more of the world and more of ourselves to share. Thank you for making us a family. Thank you for inviting us to this dance.

Love,
Mama