At your four month appointment you were 14.6 pounds, 25.5 inches, big head.  You manage, most days, to insert your thumb in your mouth in what appears to be a fairly satisfactory way.  You lift your toes into the air and then sometimes the weight of them tips you to the right or left, onto your side, in a way that surprises you.  Right now you're wearing a striped orange sleeper that stretches tight across your thighs and a bib (featuring a bulldog and the words 'Ruff and Rough") to catch the flow of drool and snot that is ceaseless.  I nursed you at 12 last night and then you were awake again at 2 so Daddy rocked you and changed you and administered the hated blue bulb syringe to your nose.  You slept, finally, in your car seat and then woke again at 6 to nurse and then to lay against my chest, raising your head to catch my face and smiling hugely, delighted, finding me for the first time again and again.  When people hear your penny whistle shriek they turn (Yesterday, at the Tavern.  Wednesday, at church.  Tuesday, at Blue Monday.) and they smile.  They think this sound is a fluke, a blip, an odd little chirrup.  The do not realize that it is in fact the ONLY SOUND YOU MAKE (other than crying).  It's like living with Captain VonTrapp.  Only your sister singing "My Favorite Things" has not driven you to give up the sound, it instead increase in volume as though while Maria played her guitar the captain had decided to accompany her on his whistle.

Yesterday was a big day.  I invited my students over for the last day of class and they squeezed into our living room and ate brownies and Rice Krispie bars and baby oranges and drank homemade hot chocolate with gigantic marshmallows floating on top.  Gak carried you in the Bjorn and you listened politely to the first part of the class (then you began the penny whistle shrieking and she had to take you upstairs).  The students read their poems and then left in a shuffle of backpacks and hugs and drippy boots.  They were a lovely group and I'll miss meeting with them and hearing their work. 

Then we went to Thisbe's preschool for the Christmas sing.  They tapped sticks and shook bells and belted out songs about crocodiles and elves and candy canes from the masking tape "Xs" that mark their spots on the carpet.  Afterward, Thisbe ran so long and so hard that she finally fell and cut her lip and somehow ended up on the potty with a frozen penguin pressed to her face, Gak squatting in front of her, Daddy trying to dab her blood off his sweater.  Afterward the appropriate period of crying we went to the library and saw the model trains and then (after more meltdown) went to the Tavern for dinner.