A Washed Up Has Been at Age 15

Dear Ellie,

Life has been comfortably dull, lately.  You've become somewhat less of a rollee pollee in the weeks since we took you off of rice cereal.  Someone put you into the taffy puller and you've gone from the 3rd percentile in length to the 15th.  In weight, you've moved out of the obese category, too, but your head is still massive!  That's fine with me, though, because you seem to be hitting all of your cognitive milestones ahead of schedule.  You can carry out quite the conversation, even if that conversation only involves words like "Vuuuooooo" and "Aaaabbbbuuufffft."  Impressively, your vocabulary of baby babble is expanding by the day.             

You are having a few issues, but nothing out of the ordinary.  I'm still not convinced that your arms are quite up to snuff.  You've never been CrossFit when it comes to upper body strength and you don't often push yourself up by your elbows (maybe because of that ginormous, heavy head??)  You've also lost interest in a lot of the exercises that help to strengthen your arms and tend to cry and throw a fit during tummy time.  The physical therapist told us to try to keep your tummy time "positive" which your mother has interpreted as "don't let Ellie cry during exercises."  Unfortunately, you tend to get a lot more done when you're angry.  Personally, I'm somewhat an advocate of Fredrick Nietzsche's perspective when it comes to tummy time: "Whatever doesn't kill your two-month-old baby can only make her stronger."  

On the upside, Grandma Kottiath seems to know the secret to tearless tummy time.

To change the subject, I think we've somewhat informally taken you off of quarantine.  According to the pulmanologist, your lungs are still a bit weak, but for the most part, your chronic lung disease is mostly a memory.  I used to have a sort of reflexive impulse every few minutes to check for your breathing and to make sure your lips were red, but that's mostly gone now.  If you were to get sick I suspect you can weather a cold with about as much ease as a normal baby.  We've begun having more visitors, too, like Debbie and Winona.  You were quite at ease in Winona's arms, given that she is your fellow Micropreemie-in-Arms:

Also, you've begun your training in the arts.  Remember, we Smiths aren't just science nerds and such, we're musicians, artists, and writers.  To get you started, we've introduced you to your very own piano (a gift from the Renkins!)  When we sat you at the stool, you erratically slammed the keys with quite a bit of enthusiasm, which I can only assume is an expression of your natural musical talents.  At 10 weeks adjusted age, this was quite impressive and we can't really expect more out of you than that.  In this day and age, though, if you plan on excelling at something you need to have strict goals (and since you are too little to develop goals of your own, we'll develop them for you!)  At 6 months, we expect you to learn a few chords.  At 1 year, perhaps the chopsticks.  At 5 years old, you should be composing your own music.  I know this probably sounds pretty ambitious, but remember that Mozart was composing at 5 years old too and HE lived during a much more primitive era.  Besides, if you get as much greatness out of the way as you can, you can be a washed up "has been" by the age of 15 and move on to other pursuits.