Dear Cooper:
You are 3 1/2 months old……and YOU’RE EATING YOUR HANDS? As your guide mother, I am concerned that we are responsible for this cannibalistic behavior.
I know your guide father refused to touch your mother’s pumped breast milk. He even acted grossed out by it….IN FRONT OF YOU. I tried to cover your eyes and ears, but there MTM was, icking and yucking and bleching his way right out of the room as soon as I got your bottle out of the refrigerator. It didn’t help that I chased him around the house and tried to squirt him with the stuff. I wanted him to tell me whether he thought it was warm enough for you, and he acted like I was trying to spray him with mace. Or rat poison. I think Get that vile, nasty stuff away from me might’ve poured from his mouth to your impressionable little ears.
I fear that we have hampered your positive development for life by putting you off your food, especially when I see photos like this one of you on the internet:
Other than your flesh-eating tendencies – which I hope have nothing to do with our shenanigans with your food – you delight me. I miss your wise, knowing, almost ancient eyes. Your cheeks are plumper than when I saw you last. I want to jump through my computer screen and squeeze them all the time. The noises you make are native sounds I can almost, not quite hear, but I imagine them every day. You’re even on my mind when I go to the movies and see your toy giraffe on the screen.
It’s been too long since I held you, almost two months since I heard you laugh. I know you miss your gorgeous mom who’s back at work, and I can see you adjusting with ease, because you KNOW things. You’re an old soul. In your eyes, I can still see where you came from, the stories you could tell me. I’m dying to know.
Let’s make a deal. The next time I see you, I’m going to rock you and sing the song I crooned at your parents’ wedding. You were in our hearts with The Very Thought of You. We knew you even then. Maybe you were in the cracks of the mortar at Old Sheldon Church, hanging in the Spanish moss, floating in the air. All I know is you were there. I’ll sing that song to you if you’ll whisper to me, give me a sign. Tell me what you know while you still recall it. Spill your dreams before that’s all you think they are. Let me help you hold them close before the world tries to tell you they’re not true.
Live life, little Coop. Every day.
Your adoring guide parents,
Andra and MTM
57 Comments
This is happiness. You are lovely. And MAN, is Cooper the luckiest guide son or what?
On another note… Why does MTM fear boob milk so?
Now I can guarantee you I will not be eating my usual corn flakes this morning…
Two words, Soy Milk!!
Don’t get me wrong; I love milk, just prefer it to come from a different kind of jug! And, don’t get me wrong, I love jugs; just prefer that they not be squirting milk!
Kristen, I think MTM tried to answer your question. My answer is I DON’T KNOW.
That photo was too cute not to write something to him.
The commentary was starting to take on a life of its own. Cooper is a beautiful baby and he IS the luckiest guide son – BY FAR!! What a beautiful letter you have written to him.
I enjoy it when the commentary runs amuck.
Amuck is a truck that got stuck
A jug shall he pluck
To save face he’ll need luck
From a squirt he shall duck
Here now stops the MTM Buck
I really think it is spelled ‘amok.’
How can I ever escape to the Bat Cave with the likes of this on my tail?
poetic license, my dear…
Such a cute kid, it’s been fun seeing the pics the last few months and watching him grow and change.
Now as to the Shadow Ninja’s aversion to the aforementioned nutritional non-solid, let me say that he is perfectly within his man card rights to run from the room when cwazzzy woman tries to chase him down with a fire hose of non-solids. What in the world gets in the mind of Queen A??? Me thinks we need to put her in a man cave for a week with nothing but football games and beer until she gains a better appreciation of the sensitivities of men.
Back to the Coop-ster, let’s hope he grows out of his flesh eating tendencies or you may have to bone up on your Zombie survival skillzzz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l9ocz8jlKs&feature=player_detailpage
How do you know I’m not in the man cave this week, Lou?? MTM’s Brewers are in the baseball play-offs. Bob Uecker is talking to me in my sleep. Miller High Life is flowing everyplace (but in my mouth. Ick.) MTM’s Mom is here, and they’re even talking about other things Milwaukee. I am drowning in my man card-ness.
OH MY, CHEESO-MANIA Rules the Bat Cave.
Now, I have a craving for Cheetos. Thankyouverymuch.
1000 calories a bite and the added pleasure of wondering if your friends will tell you that your teeth are orange.
I know you would tell me, Lou. 🙂
What a beautifully written love letter. I can feel the love. What an adorable little guy. 🙂
He keeps getting cuter and cuter, Lori.
Awwww. Sweet post, but I admit I could barely concentrate on your words; I was too busy cooing at that sweet picture. Those little pudgy fists look so delicious I would want to nom on them too. And his little apple cheeks. Nom!
The picture inspired the post. I was sort of dry last night when I sat down to write. Up popped that photo on Flickr, and back came my inspiration.
I love this writing and I love babies. Cooper is such a handsome little fellow – those cheeks are just begging to be kissed.
I am glad you like the baby posts.
Also, perhaps MTM would enjoy a refreshing scoop of ice-cream instead?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store
And now I USED TO love ice cream…thanks for putting me off my dessert cravings…I needed to be a bit less ‘pudgy’ anyway.
After you and your Mom ganging up on me last night with the ice cream, you deserve it.
MTM had a minor breakdown when he heard about that stuff.
I was just about to post the BBC’s link to the Covent Garden shop selling breast milk ice cream and saw Andria had beaten me to it!
Love those last four sentences.
hahaha – you mean I actually beat the “earlybird” to the metaphorical worm?! There’s still those stories about the people making breast milk cheese out there somewhere, if you’d like to find another link to gross out poor MTM!
I can never manage to write something to Cooper that is not mushy by the end. He is such a sweetie. Good to know that readers are on the same wavelength. 😉
Excellent.
Thank you, Dear. I miss you.
I miss you too. I’m in self imposed hiding still. 🙂
Boo. I need to just come visit you.
Ahhh, Andra, ALL babies should be so lucky to have someone remind them that their dreams are real. Also, he IS beautiful….
May he never forget. Besides, I will crawl around on the floor and act like a goof ball with him for as long as he will tolerate me.
SO sweet! But please enlighten me…what is a guide parent?
It is what his parents are calling MTM and me as godparents.
Beauty inspires beauty. Lovely well written love letter. That little fellow is just gorgeous. I multiply the number of us wishing we could nom-nom those chubby cheeks.
I won’t tell MTM about the time my former husband found the small pitcher (which was all I could find at the needed moment) with the mommy milk and poured it into his coffee…he wondered why it tasted different…I smiled and told him–and he poured it out and started again.
Cheryl, I just read this out loud to MTM while he was driving.
I am a wicked person.
Ha.
Wicked to the core!
He loves me anyway.
Sweetness. And tell MTM he’s not alone. I used to gag at the thought of MY OWN breast milk. I was pretty horrified to be the overflowing human fountain filled with that stuff!
It is a mystical process to me. I read your comment aloud to him, too, with him squirming and saying, “Stopitstopitstopit.”
You just brought back the feelings I had holding my first grandchild when he was just old enough to look me in the eye. Thank you, that was nice.
The BOOB MILK did that????? Wow, I am good.
Smile.
Always a pleasure to hear my writing reconnects readers with good memories.
Boob milk is OK,but I prefer cow. 🙂
Ha. Me too.
Well, read this to Michael. I remember my sister Wanda and I beside the rocker as my Mom was breastfeeding my brother, Jacky. She would send us to the kitchen to get spoons and squirt milk into the spoons for us to have milk too. We were all babies – only 3 1/2 years between us.
I didn’t want to read that. Ew.
Gorgeous post, even if it is suffused with breast milk…I wouldn’t worry too much about hand eating. I do that all the time in my mid ’40s…(erk)
MTM read the draft last night and said, “Only you would take that cute picture and turn it into this post.” (Sarcastic tone.)
Nice post.
It reminds me that we still have one tube of breast milk saved in the freezer from 12 years ago…probably pull it out at Abigail’s rehearsal dinner to embarrass her (that is what parents are supposed to do, right?). We are sentimental folks here in NYC.
Awesome. What kind of breast milk toast could be penned for that occasion? The mind whirs with possibilities…,.,,,
“You were in our hearts with The Very Thought of You. We knew you even then. Maybe you were in the cracks of the mortar at Old Sheldon Church, hanging in the Spanish moss, floating in the air. All I know is you were there. I’ll sing that song to you if you’ll whisper to me, give me a sign. Tell me what you know while you still recall it. Spill your dreams before that’s all you think they are. Let me help you hold them close before the world tries to tell you they’re not true.”
Wow. That was so beautiful. Just WOW.
Thanks. He’s an inspiring little guy. 🙂
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