Graham

You are 5 months, 1 week, and 5 days old.  You weigh over 19 pounds.  You'd weigh a little more if you hadn't been waylaid by a cold that got into your lungs a couple of weeks ago.  Yep, not even 6 months old and you've already had a serious cold and an ear infection (at 10 weeks).  As an asthmatic, it was excruciating for me to listen to you wheeze and struggle to breathe.  They're calling it Reactive Airway Disease for now, but it means you might be prone to asthma.  I'm so sorry.

You like to eat, but you can be a snacker, especially in the morning when you're too eager to see what's going on in the world to focus on mealtime.  So you end up eating every couple of hours during the day and every four hours or so at night. Before the cold, you'd started having at least one 5-6 hour stretch overnight, but we can't seem to get back to that.  So we're starting with the solid food.  You've had a bit of banana and avocado in the past month and Tuesday was your first rice cereal and the beginning of a regular meal.

Your eyes are changing color, from the center out - blue-gray to brown? Green? Hazel?  And the long, dark old-man hair you were born with is slowly being replaced by light, golden wisps of hair.

You're wearing 9-month clothes.  You have creases at your wrists, dimples at your knuckles and rolls at your thighs.

Finally, this week, after 3 weeks of rolling to your tummy and getting stuck, you're more consistently rolling back to your back on your own, even though you first rolled from tummy to back like 2 months ago.

Big brother is the best toy you have.  He almost always garners a smile from you.  He came in quite handy when I needed to get you to stay looking straight ahead for your breathing treatments.

Everyone says you look "just like" your big brother.  When I look at the two of side-by-side, I don't see it, but when I compare Brother's baby photos to you, well, the resemblance is undeniable and leaves me feeling slightly discombobulated.  Like I'm just re-doing the baby from 5 years ago, except he's now 4 feet long and never stops talking!

Gideon, July 2007

Graham, May 2012

Gideon, June 2007

Graham, May 2012

Gideon, March 2007

Graham, April 2012

But you are definitely you're own person - you're curious about the world like Brother and naps take a little more work like they did with Brother, but you already can fall asleep on your own and once you're asleep for a nap, you're out much longer than Brother ever was at this age.  You like faces; Brother liked objects.  You smile easily.  Brother was a studier, and only Dada could crack a smile on his face at your age.  

We are all quite smitten with you.  I'm not sure what took you so long to get here, but you were most definitely worth the wait.  I think we all still secretly say a prayer of thanks for you every now and then.  

Jeremy's Birthday

Mother's Day 

You light up our lives.