The Little Guy



Infant

My grandson Patrick has crossed a threshold. He has outgrown infancy and become a bona fide newborn. Just like that. From one day (#90) to the next (#91) – according to at least one source. (Experts have been known to disagree on the semantics of baby development – baby being the all-inclusive moniker for one-day-olds to one-year-olds). 

Newborn

Actually the little guy (my terminology for my grandson from birth to, at least, marriage) increases his baby-bilities week to week – the usual time between our visits together. Currently, with more than a dozen of those seven-day spreads behind us, he no longer sleeps the entire time between feedings and changings.  Lately he gives Grammy his attention at least half the time she spends in his neck of the eastern Massachusetts woods . And he has left behind his wobbly infant helplessness , moving on to intentional newborn movement: a stretch to reach a bright toy, the examination of a familiar face, a grasp of a baby bottle. 
 

Best of all, he is developing a personality! He likes to laugh, especially at the monkey face that is positioned atop the frame of the baby-mirror in his crib. Try as I may to get Patrick to look at himself in the mirror, he fixates on the monkey instead – and chortles, loudly, as if he is watching stand-up comedy performed by the E-TRADE toddler (toddler being the generally accepted term for talking baby,   digitally enhanced or not).

 

 
 

THE E-TRADE TALKING BABY

 

Oh Boy!

Patrick Lawrence is truly the man of the hour. In particular, the 5 A.M. to 6 A.M hour a few days ago, when he went from there in his mother’s womb to here in our arms. What a wonder to see him under wraps then, and now so tidily swaddled – like a present  wrapped in soft flannel.

Those of us waiting his arrival tried to guess the day he would be born. I sensed he would be a July baby – even though his due date was August 4! He just carried so large in his second and third trimester. Weighed in at 8.2 pounds at birth. A friend who is an ultrasound technician tells me he would have tipped the scales at over 9 pounds if he went full term! I share Patrick’s Mom’s relief that he did not!

I wondered who he would look like – what combination of Mom and Dad would he sport from head to toe. Minutes after birth, I could see the resemblance to his father in the scrunched up features of his tiny face. And then, from a slightly different angle, his mother’s hairline and the thick fuzzy “do” she wore so well in her very first portrait, wilder than bed hair, yet so naturally beautiful.  He has long, long fingers, too, like his mom’s baby hands, already reaching out to touch air, hair . . . whatever’s out there waiting to be touched.