Five Months Old

Today Patrick turns five months old. February is a deceitful month; it is shorter than expected, so a month passes before you even realize it. It seems like only a week or so ago when I did my four-month birthday post. By the way, it's one of the best and might be worth delving into the archives if you haven't read it yet.

Anyway, in the last month, Patrick has developed a lot. He now eats solids once a day, balances sitting up on his own, sleeps well through the night, smiles and laughs more often, is teething in earnest now, and idolizes his daddy. He turns into more of a little man every day.

The other day I started working on collecting pictures for Patrick's photo album. All the pictures we have of him are digital, and I haven't gotten around to printing any out yet. I got motivated enough the other day to at least start choosing which pictures I want to include and figuring out how to print them, if not actually print any. As I perused all those pictures, I began to realize just how much Patrick has grown and developed in the past few months. For example, here's a picture taken at Thanksgiving, when he was about one and a half months old.

(Thanks to my brother Steve for the picture)

Patrick looks so tiny and like he hasn't started to grow into his skin yet. He reminds me of an old man in so many of the pictures we have of him from this time period because of the way the skin on his face wrinkles. It's cute, but I much prefer his chubby cheeks and Michelin-man arms that I'm used to now. It's hard for me to imagine that at one time I thought the size he was in this picture was pretty big. Of course, it is compared to what I was used to seeing when he was still in the hospital.

When you look at his five-month picture, though, taken earlier today, you can see just how preemie-ish he looked then, as much as he had grown already. He looks much healthier now. If you didn't know better, you'd just think he was a normal baby who was small for his age.

So much from those early months is already starting to fade into just vague memories. Of course I can remember his birth and those months in the hospital, but I've forgotten exactly how tiny he was and what I felt going to visit him every day. I'm so used to this new routine that I can't fathom the routine of driving an hour across town every evening. It's funny how looking at one of his early pictures can bring back all those memories, though. I'll never completely forget those moments from his early days, but I think I prefer leaving them as more vague, fuzzy ideas of a memory. There is still so much pain associated with those days in the hospital that if the memories are dulled, so is that pain. The only things that stay clear are the pictures we have, and they generally invoke happy memories. That means the happy memories are clear and the painful memories are fuzzy. I think we can all agree that is for the best.

And here is one last picture that was just too cute to keep to myself. This one was also taken today with the first teddy bear Matt and I bought for him before he was born. It's great that he's finally bigger than the bear!