The amazing diaper-flinger

You’ve been “helping” Nana with the laundry lately. You’re starting to hand her things when she asks for them. Usually not the thing she asked for, but still, something. You do love to dive into a basket of laundry. I can’t believe how fast you can toss your diaper inserts across the room.

I solemnly swear I am up to no good

Ten months

Hello, sweet little person,

You are now an astonishing ten months old. In addition to being the marker of your tenth month, the 12th of August also happened to be your dad and my wedding anniversary. You spent the evening at your Nana’s while we went out and ate a wonderful dinner and had a, what’s it called? Oh yes, conversation. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we should occasionally discuss things outside of the minutiae of our daily routine (even when said minutiae involves the insanely wonderful, like you).

We knew when we came to pick you up that you had had a good time, as any bookshelf that stood three feet or lower had a big pile of books in front of it. Your new passion is standing up and pulling things to the floor. On occasion you’ll put something back. I find I can watch you “organize” your toys this way for long stretches of time, probably because you yourself are so engrossed in the process. Plus: standing! You love pulling yourself up, you love edging along on your tip-toes.

I’m worried that we haven’t been aggressive enough with getting you to try new solid foods. You’re indifferent when it comes to most purees, one exception being the only recently discovered spring vegetables and pasta, an organic puree from Earth’s Best that you can’t seem to get enough of. I see a lot of my peers feeding their babies all kinds of foods - cut up apples, pita bread, bananas, crackers. I worry that my being conservative (read: “chicken”) is going to make you conservative. So I’m going to be a fruit and vegetable pusher.

One of the things that’s registered with me lately is that you are going to become a functional member of the family. And by this I mean, sometime soon, I might be able to ask you to hand me things, and you might actually hand them to me. You might also say “NO!” and fling pasta at me. But you at the least will have the physical capability to hand me things. Something about this seems so foreign and wonderful - our communication is going to become specific. I am seeing evidence of this already.

Your smiles are also getting even more endearing, and inclusive. A few weeks ago, I noticed that when I was nursing you, you started kicking your foot up toward my face. After you got me in the jaw a few times, I started to pretend to stick your little toes in my mouth, and saw the corners of your eyes crinkling up in a knowing smile. I kept threatening to eat your toes, and you started to giggle a little. Since then, all I have to do is glance at your toes when you’re nursing and you crack a smile. This is indicative of your sweet, gentle sense of humor all around, I think. Sometimes you’ll be playing or examining something and you look up and crack your smile as if to say “oh! I get it!”

You babble more and more, particularly after you’ve spent time with your more talkative friends, like Mischa. We’re meeting up with more and more of your baby friends. You tend to get a little intimidated when there is more than one buddy to play with; you’ll stay close to me or your dad and observe. After a while you’ll still dive right in and play. Yesterday at our Saturday playgroup, your little standing activity table was in the corner, and since there were lots of families there with us, I forgot about it (and was in fact sitting in front of it). One of the moms asked where the table was (it had been a hit the week before), and I pulled it out and put it in the center of the room. All of you babies perked up and headed straight for it, zombie style. Seriously, you could almost hear all of your little voices calling out “BRRAAAAAINS” as you plodded toward the table. It was baby awesomeness at its finest, I tell you! It also let you shed your inhibitions for a while and you played alongside your friends.

As for your stats (some from your nine month checkup - I’m running a little behind): you now have four teeth (three on bottom, one coming in on top). You weigh about 17.25 pounds (5th percentile) and are about 27.5 inches tall (25th percentile, I think). I can’t remember your head circumference but I think it was in the 25th percentile or so. Your hair is reddish blond (yeah, we don’t know where you get that either), you have sweet chubby little thighs, big round cheeks, bubble toes, long fingers, and a merry, infectious laugh. Your least favorite activity is wearing a hat, your favorite is pulling a hat off anyone (me, your dad) or anything (your stuffed animals). You also like playing peek-a-boo, and just started playing it with us (by hiding behind a wall and popping out to scare us) rather than waiting for us to start a game with you.

Every month getting to know you just gets better and better. We love you, kiddo.

Love,
Mom

For the past two hours

… you have been sleeping in my arms while I catch up on some reading and listen to the rain pelt the roof.

Life is good.

Today’s scoreboard

You: 1 Us: 0

We had a really great Saturday, which started with a huge playgroup at our house (babies! everywhere!). It was so much fun to see all your little buddies crawling around, fun to experience the sheer noise level of seven or so babies, and finally, fun to see (and in some cases, meet) the other parents.

I did not take pictures, unfortunately, because I felt a little weird taking pictures of people who I had just met, particularly with kids involved. I don’t want to be that woman who invites you over to her house only to blind you by taking zillions of pictures of you and your kid. That said, the adorableness of all the kids, particularly when they started interacting with each other a bit, made it hard to resist taking a few shots. I’m often torn on this, actually, because on one hand, if someone took pictures of you and me at a playgroup, and then sent them to me, I’d actually be pretty thrilled since I’m rarely actually in pictures with you. Also, the babies change so much every day, I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to capture them together at these very young ages. On the other hand, if some person I had never met before was snapping pictures of me (even after asking)…I don’t know. I think I’d be fine with it in the playgroup context, but I could definitely understand how someone wouldn’t be.

So anyway. Back to the weekend.

I don’t know, kid, I think the general business of this year is catching up with me at last. Lately I’ve felt more and more tired on a daily basis. This morning you got up earlier than usual and I found myself waxing nostalgic (in my head) about those restful NEWBORN days. There is definitely something wrong with this picture.

Anyway. Today you’ve been crying and fussy on and off all day. Right now you’re playing peacefully with your dad (BOO YA). I think we’re going to put you to bed a little early, in part because you are clearly exhausted, and in part because we are.

I hope that top tooth gives you a bit of a break soon.

In the mean time, a little of The Cute:

I like to move it move it

So I realize we’ve been a bit thin on updates around here. I blame the fact that I do a lot of chasing these days: you’ve decided you’ll go ahead and enjoy this crawling thing after all. Today I opened up your safety gate and you made an exuberant break for it, heading straight out of your playroom and into the living room. The only thing that slowed down your sprint was the fact that you were cackling with glee as you went. I got down and crawled next to you and that was about all you could take, and you collapsed into peals of laughter.

I’m still getting used to you zipping from point A to point B without any apparent activity in between. It’s hard to believe that not too long ago you wouldn’t even roll over unless you absolutely had to.

Kid, you are HILARIOUS. And already far more coordinated than I’ve ever been.