Six months

In a few hours, it will be six months since we took David home from the hospital.

Soon he will have his 1000th bottle, and there have been more diapers than that. He’s 27 inches long, 18 pounds and 11 ounces, and right around 72nd percentile for height, weight, and head circumference. And of course none of that captures who he is to us.

David is our morning alarm clock and our daily entertainment. He is our lab partner on trying out new toys and new foods. He is our constant reminder of the power of a smile, ours to reassure and his to enchant. He shows us the difference between chaos and calm, and the connection between action and study. He watches us and watches the world, but he learns a tremendous amount by doing. He proves the inevitability of growth as we see dramatic leaps in his reach and grasp beyond what we can explicitly teach him. And he reaches for the dog, and he laughs at a song, and our hearts ache with joy.

When David is laying in his crib and sees us approach, he waves his arms and legs with unbounded excitement that we are going to pick him up. He gives himself over fully to anticipation in a way that we so much wanted to do ourselves as we waited outside the hospital six months ago to find out whether he would be ours. And again and again it hits us: he is ours, he is ours, he is ours. 88 days ago the court acknowledged that reality which we have lived with every minute for these six months. We know more about David than it seems possible to know about anyone, and most of that knowledge is obsolete within weeks or even days, and he retains a magical ability to surprise us in ways made deeper because of how well we know him. And we will continue to learn, students of our son.

Six months could not possibly have gone by already. And our hearts could not possibly be so full.