baby bowl: 100 days
100 days! Last week was Luke’s 100th day in this big wide world of ours. He was baptized at the church down the street, and after the baptism we had a teeny 100th day party, or a baek-il. His halmuni made Luke a miniature tteok-themed lei and a baby-crown out of silver posterboard, which has nothing to do with Korean tradition but everything to do with making a baby look hilariously awesome. Especially when his dad had one too. We had tteok coated in red bean powder to chase away evil spirits and a white cake for purity and long life. (This is normally a snowy-white rice cake called baekseolgi-tteok, but, as it turns out, if a recipe calls for “frozen rice flour” you cannot, as I so cleverly suggested, simply add more water to regular rice flour. So for us it was a regular ol’ white cake with vanilla frosting.)
How to describe the last three months? Our little man is chubbier by the day; he loves gummy open-mouthed smiles, yelling “ooh” or some variation thereof over and over at us, and cracking up when we crack up at him. He breaks out into a huge eye-squinching grin every time I pick him up from his crib in the middle of the night, which might be my favorite thing ever. Lately he’s started doing this thing where he stuffs one fist into his mouth while brandishing the other one, which, as B2 aptly observed, makes him look like he’s playing an invisible trombone. He really, really hates tummy time. Oh, and his hair is aggressively thinning on top and the back of his head, so I like to pull out the thick hair on the sides of his head to make him look like a mad scientist. (I’m also shedding like crazy, so we’re balding together. There are mama hairs and baby hairs all over the house.)
As for us, in 100 days I’ve totally forgotten what it’s like to be a lawyer, converted hard and fast to the cult of the dishwasher (seriously, I used it maybe once before in my life and now I have no idea how I lived without it) and, instead of procrastinating cleaning, started thinking bizarre things like “Yay, I have time to clean!” B2, who went back to work just a few weeks after B3 was born, spends an hour every morning playing with Luke before going in, and once in the office, texts every other hour asking “How’s potato?” My phone is constantly running out of memory from all the photos I send back.
We’re always a little bit tired, sometimes a little overwhelmed, and yet everything is always, without fail, better than it was 100 days ago. I get nostalgic over everything — but really, everything, like when B3 outgrew the newborn-size diapers (and now he’s about to outgrow the size 1, nooo). Every day has its little joys, from a surprise chortle to an extra-long nap together on a sleepy day, nestled in his softest baby blanket. Even on the nights when we can only eat dinner if we take turns holding him, and I spend hours joggling B3 around and singing “Please go to sleep, oh my goodness, please go to sleep,” the moment he goes slack on my shoulder, I don’t want to put him down. And then we get in bed and talk about how much we miss him now that he’s sleeping. Go figure.
Happy 100 days, sweet boy. In a world that has recently felt so dark, you fill every moment of our lives with sunshine. Thank you for making these last 100 days the best we could have asked for. We are so lucky to be your parents.
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