the fourth house on the left: letter to connor, 4 months 1 week and 3 days

Well, hello peanut.

By the time you are actually reading this, you may even have the good sense to wonder why I didn't start this blog sooner. Like, maybe 5 minutes after I saw "YES+" pop up on a pregnancy test in January 2009. Or, if not then, at least within hours of your long-awaited arrival on September 29, 2009. Well, I'm not sure I have an answer to that. However, I'm sure that by the time you get around to asking yourself these sorts of questions, I'll have since engaged in enough certifiably lunatic behavior that "why didn't my mom properly document my gestation and infancy?" will be the least of your questions or concerns. So, it's true-- your $75 custom-designed baby book is still stuffed into a canvas basket underneath your changing table. In a frenzy of good-intentioned craftiness, I did glue on one picture of you. Then I sort of ruined the "simple yet modern" vibe of the design by bedazzling your little picture with a bevy of mildly obnoxious pastel-colored stickers which proclaim that you are, indeed, "precious," "our treasure" or "perfect," etc.

I recently flipped through the book, filled with prompts like "first time rolled over," "first laugh," and "first smile."

Well, those blanks are yet-to-be filled in. Not because you haven't figured out how to do those things (you do them all quite well, to our great amusement). No, the blanks remain so because I (despite all of my lofty Martha Stewart aspirations) will probably never successfully complete a scrapbook in my entire life. In light of this inimitable truth, I've decided to start this blog, instead. Enjoy. And remember, if you don't call your mother often once you grow up and move out, I have plenty, PLENTY, of incriminating spit-up pictures that I won't hesitate to show your fiancee.

You are growing up so fast (the cliches are all true) and I want to be able to look back and remember you at every stage. Your father and I joke that you're our "first pancake"-- the one on whom we adjust the batter consistency and griddle temp (not literally, obviously) before ladling out the rest of the batch. So, apologies in advance for all of the mishaps to come. You might be our first pancake, but you're also the kid who made us into parents. And no one else will ever be able to say that.

So, to recap:

We started the countdown to meeting you on January 9, 2009.

You scoffed at the notion of a 40 week gestational period, and were still snug and cozy in the womb at 41 weeks 3 days, when mommy was induced

After 36 hours of labor and 2 failed epidurals, you arrived via c-section on September 29, 2009 at 8:52 pm. You weighed 8 lb 11 oz (just like mommy! at birth, that is. definitely not at the time she delivered you) and measured 22 in long. The first thing the surgeon said was "he's so handsome! look at that hair!" (or at least that's what I think she said. I was getting about 4 different intravenous drugs at the time).