Are you my baby?

Yesterday Wessy and I took a long walk together around the neighborhood.  It was a glorious day, sunny, not too warm, and a little windy.  Being Sunday, it was peaceful around the neighborhood.  Bubba came along too.  Towards the end of the walk, I encountered a Little Free Library.  These are large, glorified birdhouse-looking structures that dot our neighborhood.  They are a place to exchange books.  The one adjacent to our house is heavy on self-help and pseudoscience themes, but there is one a few blocks away that tends to have more children's books.  That is where I found these classic volumes:

As soon as we got home, I read Are You My Mother? to an indifferent Wesley (Someday soon I think he will like it.).  In it, a little bird falls from a nest and then wanders around asking individuals of other species if they are his mother.  They all say no until he encounters his own mother, who of course welcomes him back home.  The baby bird has finally found the parent to which he truly belongs.  

Over these last eleven weeks of knowing Wes, I feel a similar (albeit inverse) process of finding the baby who belongs to us has occurred.  

When he was first born, it was as if a tiny blue-eyed alien had invaded our home.  He looked funny, he had very unusual eating and sleeping habits relative to our adult norms, and if he communicated at all it was through crying.  He was, of course, all we had dreamed of and his little face and tiny limbs melted our hearts from day one.  But there was still a sense of newness and, if I'm to be honest, some strangeness around the new creature.  

We had to learn how to feed him, learn how he slept, learn to bathe him and keep him safe (which is so daunting when talking about something delicate and floppy and mute that is the size of a house cat and also of immeasurable value).  No small amount of stress and anxiety was involved.  I like to think that we have weathered it well and enjoyed ourselves a bit along the way, but getting the hang of taking care of our little friend has involved moments of emotional intensity heretofore unknown.  

All of this, and for the first six weeks or so he maintained a poker face.  His needs were to eat and sleep and occasionally have his diaper changed.  But quickly, day by day, he is becoming more and more himself.  

He has started getting bored (hence the need for such things as Jangly Elephant, Acid Turtle and The Abdomination).  He has started smiling.  He has started laughing.  When he is unhappy, he doesn't just cry, he SCREAMS.  He bats at things with his chubby hands.  When he doesn't like something (a binky, for instance) he will push it away with the same chubby hands.  

He still adores his Vitamin D drops, and giving them to him precipitates a show of adorable lip-smacking.  He will resignedly shove his entire fist in his mouth when he is hungry but senses that food may not be immediately forthcoming.  When doing tummy time, he perches sturdily on his elbows and turns his head just a little herky-jerkily in a way that looks vaguely animatronic.  When starving and at the breast, he gets so frantically excited that his flailing limbs get in the way and he often ends up slurping on his forearms.  All that is to say, he is a little person.  

And it is becoming more and more clear to me that he is not just a baby whom we love and kiss and for whom we assure survival, he is OUR little person.  Maybe I am a little late to the party in starting to feel like he is not just my baby but also my son (His father has been telling people unsolicited since day one that Wes is HIS LITTLE BUDDY).  

Wes, I am so thrilled to watch you grow and change and become more of the person you will be everyday.  I can't wait to get to know you. 

And the best part is...I think he likes us too!