Milo Bix. He'll be four months old in a few days. He's turned our world upside-down, like clockwork. For the first few months he was such a baby - basically disconnected from anything but his most basic needs. He would/could barely look you in the eye. He would pretty much only smile when he was laying on his changing table looking up at his fish mobile. About a month ago he really sort of awoke to the world outside himself, and realised that as nice as those fish are there are other nice things in the world. It's pretty much the greatest thing ever when, you hear him hooing and cooing to himself in his crib as he wakes up from one of his many naps, you go inside and say hello to him and, after consternation momentarily rolls over his face ("what the hell is THAT thing - Oh! It's daddy! I Like daddy!) his little face blossoms into a 1000 kilowatt smile and your spine melts. Milo does a good amount of babbling, and he really seems like he is discussing something. You can have conversations with him, he takes his turn making noises, and then you take your turn making noises. The seriousness of his facial expressions belies the frivolity of the sounds he is making. When Erin sings to him he sings along (and by "along" I mean he makes the same lovely hooing and cooing noises he makes any other time, only he is clearly making them in response to the music. But they bear no relation to the music) and sometimes he'll even hoo along when I play the guitar or ukulele. People say he looks more like Erin than me, and I tend to agree. I see more of both Erin's brother and my brother in him than either of us. But he is still so little. And so bald! He looks a bit like Ziggy, or Uncle Fester, or Darth Vader when he takes off his helmet at the end of Return of the Jedi. But cuter. Milo HATES his carseat. Once in maybe 5 times he can deal with it, if someone sits back there with him, but mostly (after a few minutes of amusement with the novelty of it) he howls until he can't howl anymore. It's so hard. Hearing your baby that upset is basically impossible to ignore. Part of us says "Well, shoot. I guess we are done taking him in the car!" and part of us feels like "A few minutes of crying is worth a BBQ dinner, or a few hours at Central Market, or the greenbelt, or wherever". Regardless of what we think cars are pretty much a fact of life, of our lives, anyway, and hopefully he'll get it together. In a few months he is going to have to ride with Erin to daycare everyday, anyway. Car trips are inevitable. Might as well soften him up now. It's really amazing how wholly our brains have been rearranged by little Milo. When I look at that little peanut happily gurgling away, laying on the rug chewing on his fingers or contentedly looking at something or other I sometimes get so sad. Is it protectiveness? Am I mourning the ongoing disconnection that he is experiencing from his mother and me, the growing disconnection that is basically endemic to the human condition? Or is it something else? At any rate it is overwhelming and, again, not something I can easily explain.