Smiling in your sleep

sweet sleep, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Dear Silas,

I had been holding off writing this first letter to you, dear boy, as I waited for you to put your stamp on me. With all the events preceeding and following your arrival -- some that don't even really pertain to you -- I wanted to get a better feel for who you are.

I waited for your first pediatric visit to see how big you were; to see how you measured up with another first visit I'd encountered. I waited to see how your eyebrows and lashes grew in. Would they be thick? Thin?

I waited long past your first smile ... four weeks was it? Perhaps gas? No matter, by six weeks you were smiling more broadly and often. And as always, even in utero, you still smile in your sleep.

It's probably going to annoy you, being second. Being the little brother. There will always be someone else leading the way.

It's tempting to compare, to look for differences: You don't cry too often (no matter what your sister says); You enjoy being worn in the sling; You do not like being put down; You accept "tummy time" with much more enthusiasm than you know who.

It is my theory that you will be a cuddly child. I could be wrong about that, of course, but what I'm probably not wrong about is that you will be a heartbreaker. Potentially mine.

It's been oppressively hot this summer. I can't bring myself to swaddle you in blankets, and yet I bundle you up in the pouch sling and wear you close to my heart. You are warm, your body a furnace just like mine, or so your father says anyway.

"It's like a fourth trimester," I tell folks when they comment on how content you seem all folded up like you are still inside. "Only without the heartburn and swollen ankles," I laugh.

Tonight, however, before the sun set completely and I turned the fans back from their outward stream, I saw the real you as we rocked in the chair. The you that has nothing to do with your birth order, or your sister or the million things that keep me from looking into your eyes every second of every hour of every day.

It's true what someone told me once. Despite all the struggle of having more work and less time; more hugs to give but less space in your arms, there is always room. Room that you didn't even know you had. Room that clears itself.

You came into that room without making a sound; you just slipped right in as if you were there all along.

I can't wait to get to know you, boyo. I have a feeling you are something special, too.

Love,

Mommy