Lucidia Lohman

Four Months

I have no idea how it happened, but you are now four months old. Four. That’s many days and weeks old. Almost too many. (You’re really four months and four days old, but who’s counting?)

When you were born, I told your father that we have a new clock, a new way to tell time—and it’s terrifying because I wonder if I’ll always want to slow it down, rewind it, to just stop time for a moment and admire you. But then I think If you’re this cool now, imagine what it’s going to be like when I can have complete, coherent conversations with you. What can I learn from you?

You were a newborn once, I swear to you (and myself) that you were. You were 8 pounds, 6.6 ounces, and you were mushy and happy and serene. You’re now eating rice cereal, refusing any kind of formula, you love apple juice (just like I did when I was a kid), and smiling. Oh, those smiles. There is one smile, though, I have yet to photograph, and I doubt I’ll ever get to. You give it only to me. It’s the smile very few people in life ever get to experience, like the kind where a long-lost lover returns, and you smile because your world just brightened up. It’s a subconscious, instantaneous smile of recognition, I think. You give it to me when I come to get you in the middle of the night when you’re cooing over the monitor, conversing happily with shadows, or when we get ready to nurse. (That’s when you also do “big eyes” and make an “Oooh!” sound.) Please remember to give me that smile just once in awhile when you’re a teenager, ok? It’ll help me put things in context.

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