Hearts - mine, daddy's, and Juni's - truly are ready to burst around here with all the baby sweetness. Owen is a snuggle snuggle bear. He loves being hugged and kissed and squeezed and squished and snuggled. He grabs on and giggles and laughs and we are all powerless to resist. Juni must give him a hundred hugs and kisses a day. I love Baby Owen, she shouts, love him! So much! So so so much!
Owen has been rolling from his back to his tummy and back again since the beginning of February (three months old!), which came as a surprise to all of us since Juniper didn't accomplish this feat until she was almost six months old. A few weeks later, he learned to pivot 360 degrees on his belly, which meant that no area was off limits to this curious, grabby little one. And now.. now that he is almost five months old, he can belly crawl forward, reaching reaching for any object of his desire.
They say that the second baby grows up faster than the first. It must just feel that way, I thought, familiar. But no, this little boy is tumbling and stretching outward and upward by the second. Each day I say, there's no need to hurry, little one, come sit with your mama for a bit, come be my baby. The world will wait for us. But just then, his sister whizzes by and I feel his head turn, his chubby little legs tense with the anticipation, yearning even, that soon they will stand and then walk and then run and then whiz through our days right alongside her.
For now, he grabs at my cheeks and pets my nose and pulls at my hair and talks and talks and talks. Gurgles and shouts and whoops and chortles, tuning up the instrument of his voice loudly, gleefully. His sounds fill the house, echo off the ceiling, sweet, triumpant sounds matched only by his sister's loud insistent questions and even louder declarations. Our house is a cacophony, a symphony really, of growing growing voices.
