Dear Syed Brian (Vol. 1 Iss. 2)

You have now been gracious enough to allow me to be your mother for a second month and I am thankful for it. This month has brought so many changes and you look and act like a different baby. No longer are you a blob...you are now a real baby!!!! You have much better control of your head and are able to look around much easier. You decided that this was the month in which you would start to smile. Your dad and I were extremely excited to see you smile as it made us think that the sleepless nights and stressful days might be worth it after all. It also convinced us that perhaps we should go into comedy because there can only be one reason that you smile at us: we must be hysterically funny. The pediatrician dashed our hopes of a comedic future and calmly stated that you were expected to smile this month and that it really had nothing to do with us. You managed to meet all of the expected milestones in this month including lifting your head while on your tummy, smiling, starting to coo, and startling when you hear loud noises. An added bonus with your milestones: you met them by the time you were 6.5 weeks rather than the expected 8 weeks. The fact that you seem so advanced is undoubtedly related to the genetic gifts bestowed upon you by your father and me. (We have to take some credit now because it won't be very long before all of the credit will be yours and yours alone, just as it should be.) One thing that you can absolutely take credit for is the growth spurt that you went on this month. You have jumped from the 50th percentile for height to the 97th percentile - in less than 6 weeks! Your weight is still hanging out around the 50th percentile. However, the most stunning achievement is in the growth of your head: it went from the 70th percentile to over the 100th percentile. Because of this, your father and I are working diligently on your intellectual development: with a cranium the size of yours, there must be a large brain inside that needs to develop. So, we've been working on multiplication tables and the periodic table of elements this month. Next month we'll be reviewing Fibonacci numbers and medicinal chemistry. This month marked another significant milestone in your life: you started sleeping in your own room! While you have always slept in your own bed, you moved into your very own room where Simon and Charlie don't disturb you as much. You like having your own space and you are sleeping for longer periods of time now that you are in your crib. The entire household is relieved and grateful for sleep that lasts longer. As you have been more alert his month, Simon and Charlie have been more excited to have you in the house. There is a slight glimmer of hope in their eyes that you might actually serve a purpose for them someday. In fact, Simon is so hopeful that this is a possibility that he pushes his toys toward you now in hopes that one day you'll pick up his toy and throw it for him. Charlie, on the other hand, is extremely hopeful that you will start to share food with him so he tries to take your bottle and pick up any leftovers from your bib. So far, his efforts have been without success. I am starting to see some familiar tendencies in your behavior...it appears you might be "strong-willed." I believe that "strong-willed" is nicer than saying that you seem to be bull-headed and stubborn at times. There have been several occasions this month where you have clenched your fists, arched your back, set your jaw, and proceeded to scream. Usually this occurs when you don't want to go to sleep at night. Unfortunately, you always seem to give in and fall asleep...your eyelids betray you every single night despite your best efforts. You are also starting to learn how to fake crying. Once in a while you will give a pathetic cry or two (without tears) and stick out your bottom lip. You then open your eyes briefly to see if I'm looking at you and responding in an appropriate manner. If I do not respond as you think I should, you repeat the process. When I still don't respond, you immediately revert to being your usual happy self. One final skill that you acquired this month that is worth mentioning is your ability to pull hair. You LOVE to pull mom's hair, and it is even more fun if you're screaming when you do it! Also, just to make sure that daddy doesn't feel left out, you pull his hair, too. Since you can't reach the hair on his head, you prefer his chest hair. The first time you pulled your dad's hair, you caught him off guard. He was half asleep and had taken off his t-shirt because you spit up on it. You then proceeded to grab two fistfuls of his chest hair and pulled it as hard as you could...I'm not sure who was yelling louder, you or your father...the only difference was that his voice was a little deeper than yours. This month, you continue to like cuddles, sleeping, eating, playing on your mat, pushing the chime ball, and looking at the frog over your car seat. You still do not like baths or having your clothes changed. You are also tired of cold weather and are ready for the spring. Your father and I have treasured getting to establish our family with you - it's the three of us and we couldn't be happier or more content. We're still the luckiest people in the world and are excited to see you grow and learn. Until next month...Love, Mom