Dear Merritt,

This is your 90 day review.

Three months, little dude. Where did they go? And what have we learned?

The head-butt is your weapon of choice, followed by the talon-death-grip-falcon-claw-twist. What you don't realize is that your thousand watt grin is more deadly than those two combined. You flash that grin blithely, all over the place. I go weak in the teeth and the elbows and the knees every single time those chubby cheeks reach up and touch your eyelashes and those bare, ridgy gums make an appearance. And the nose scrunch ... Oh, Mylanta, The Nose Scrunch!When you aren't blinding me with your smile, you're exploring your voice. Your vocal expeditions are as varied as all the directions in which the hairs on your sweet head point. Sometimes you scream from the bottom of your toes all the way up. Sometimes you test your range; you go from zero to Mariah Carey. Sometimes you just coo. Haiku, actually. Uncle John says your first word was a muffled "ouch" as I was mauling you with a burp cloth. I say your second-first word is haiku. And your third-first. And fourth-first. And so on. I regularly hear you recite babble this ... haiku ... to yourself.

haiku haiku hai
ku haiku haiku haiku
refrigerator
I don't want to jinx it, but you've sort of figured out that nighttime is for sleeping. Most nights I batten you down and eight or nine hours later my sac(ks) au lait are explodo-happy to see you. The feeling is mutual as you tend to make explodo-happy diapers after your stop at the all you can drink milk bar. Pooping directly after (and sometimes during) breakfast? Multi-tasking!

After such an appropriate segue, is now a good time to mention how yesterday you duked a number three while we were in the bath, turning the water insta-yellow as poo phlegm lapped against the walls of the tub and clung to my sandpaper-y legs and settled at the drain? And then, relieved of all that backdoor pressure, all you wanted to do was nurse ... right there in that tepid bathtub full of diarrhea? No? Now's not a good time to mention that? How about never? Is never good?

DONE.

I devised a new parenting video game titled "Call of Duty." Except when I started thinking up what all the game would entail, my sleep deprivation prevented me from coming up with anything except a catapult for baby gear:
1) There could be a fussy baby and you hurl pacifiers at it.
2) There could be a naked baby and you heave diapers at it.
3) There could be a hungry baby and you launch milk at it (in this case, perhaps you just aim virtual boobs in the direction of hunger, but I digress).
You see where this is going. Shoot said objects at the poor, unassuming baby. Merrittime, that is so far, so very distant from the way I take care of and love you. Also, the innovation of that made-up catapult requires a major initial investment and I'd prefer to spend those monies inventing something that keeps the pacifier in your mouth. Or just buying a spectacularly trained Capuchin monkey ... who will keep the pacifier in your mouth.

But seriously.
I found myself crying on the children's baseball glove aisle at Target last weekend.
Basking in all that is you and all that is to come.
You make my heart buoyant.Love,
Momma