Homebound

Dear Mackenzie,

You are such a happy baby! You smile a lot and always with your mouth wide open, which I love! But I gotta say, it's really hard to make you laugh! When Second GuhGaw was a baby, he laughed at all sorts of things all of the time (and still laughs a lot at everything). You don't find many things (like the silly faces or sounds I make) to be all that hilarious and when I do something that actually does make you laugh, it only makes you laugh a couple of times. Again in comparison to Second GuhGaw, if something made him laugh, I could do it dozens of times and he would laugh every time. You are a much tougher audience!

I love all of your little baby mannerisms and am just trying to soak them all in before they disappear. You often pause while nursing to look up and smile at me or stare into my eyes. You stick out the tip of your tongue a lot and you do this adorable snow angel wiggle dance whenever you're lying down in your crib or on the changing table. You now reach for objects that I hold in front of your face (your first sign of independence!) and have an incredibly strong grip. You especially love this one rattle you have and shake it so violently that I have to sit next to you when you play with it to make sure you don't bonk yourself in the face with it (which you have done a few times). You also love the rattle so much that you immediately cry when you drop it.

In addition to your strong grip, you also have strong lungs! You squeal and shout REALLY loudly for a baby who is only 5 months old! I guess you figure you have to since you are the youngest and you have to compete with five other people in our household in order to be heard! We were playing Taboo the other night and the game got really loud with Daddy, Big GuhGaw, JieJie, Second GuhGaw and me all calling out answers. You clearly weren't going to be left out because you were shouting along with us--and you were loudest!

You are currently 17.8 pounds and 26 inches tall. You are sleeping sometimes more than 8 hours at night, which is AMAZING. But there were two not amazing developments this month. The first one is that the eczema that you started to get last month has gotten worse and is now quite bad on your face, torso, arms and legs (so, like, your entire body). Your pediatrician recommended a hydrocortisone gel, so hopefully that will help.

The second incident is so crazy and unthinkable and literally life-changing that I still can't believe it's happening. You are way too young to even understand what is going on right now but the world, and I mean the entire world, is going through a pandemic. A new coronavirus started making people really sick in China back in November and to the disbelief of everyone, it has literally spread to every corner of the globe in a very short matter of time. People in every country have been infected and it is the most contagious disease humankind has ever seen. If you have the coronavirus, you can infect someone just by coughing or sneezing on them. Some people who get the virus recover but many, many people who contracted the virus have died and there is currently no cure or vaccine so we are all practicing "social distancing" and staying away from each other. Schools, restaurants, movie theaters and practically everything except essential businesses such as grocery stores and pharmacies are closed and people are being asked to stay in their homes to prevent spreading the disease. We can't see our other family members, we can't see our friends, we can't see anyone. I have never lived through anything like this in my life and it is mind-boggling to think that one disease has managed to affect the entire population of the world and there is nothing we can to do stop it.

After you were born, we were kind of in quarantine because I didn't take you anywhere and didn't invite any friends over to meet you. Your immune system was still so new and weak and I didn't want to expose you to any unnecessary germs. You were also born right before the dead of winter, so it was too cold to take you anywhere. But by the beginning of March, you were older, the weather was warming up a little and I took you for your very first walk around the neighborhood in your stroller on March 9. Little did I know that it would be your first and last walk around the neighborhood because now we have to quarantine ourselves. The coronavirus had been gradually spreading from China to Europe and the West Coast of the United States. In February, there were no reported coronavirus cases in New York. But it all changed in March. The number of New Yorkers who became ill with the coronavirus suddenly skyrocketed into the thousands within the first two weeks of March. New York became an epicenter of the virus and we no longer felt safe going anywhere. The public schools were closed on March 16 and we stopped leaving the house.

We have now been in quarantine for a month. We haven't seen PoiPoi or GongGong or any of our friends other than on FaceTime and only Daddy leaves the house once a week to get groceries. Your siblings have started online school with their teachers and we try to stay active by doing dance and yoga videos on YouTube, playing in the attic or getting some fresh air in the backyard. It has been a huge change for everyone. Before this, we saw PoiPoi almost every day. We always went somewhere on the weekends--friends' houses, museums, playgrounds--and ate out at restaurants a couple times a week. Now we are stuck at home all day, every day. But I am grateful that at least the six of us are together, that we have the option to stay at home safely and that we are all healthy. Hopefully, this will all be over sooner rather than later and when you are older, we will tell you about that insane time when you were a baby and the whole world couldn't leave their homes.

Love,
Mom