Ten months (and a lil' bit)

Another flip of the calendar page, and suddenly you’re ten months old. Maybe I am finally coming to terms with how fast you are growing up – for the first time this month, I can say you actually seem your age. You look and act a lot like a kid these days. Not a baby, a kid. Someone with ideas and opinions and the physical ability to do a lot of what he puts his mind to. Sure, this involves shredding my magazines a little more often than I’d like, but it’s pretty cool to see that you can accomplish what you set out to do, even if it’s just destroying stuff.

This month, we found you a daycare provider. You’ll start going to Cindy’s in just a couple of weeks – for a few hours at a time at first, to settle you in, and then full days before the month is out. I’m thankful that she had an opening. She seems to run a great program, has a nice setup in her home, provides good food – and you genuinely seem to like her. I am still having a hard time coming to grips with you having a home away from home – but it’s inevitable, and I think Cindy’s is the best possible place for you to be.

In the first draft of this letter, I wrote that I don’t think you’re going to crawl - at least, not the way other kids do, as a primary mode of transportation. And then, just this morning, you did it – you took off. It was only five or six ‘steps,’ but it’s the first time you’ve gone anywhere that way before (at least that I’ve seen). And then this afternoon, you quickly doubled that distance; it seems that now the sky’s the limit. I suppose it’s time to batten down the hatches: our carefree days are over!…

At least until this crawling started, pulling up was your latest trick; and like all your past tricks, it’s something you are in the midst of repeating about a million times a day. I know that you will soon be on to your next trick though, and you’ll toss this feat aside as if you’ve forgotten how to do it. That may be a good thing – you love to pull up in your crib when I put you down to sleep, and use this ruse to avoid your naps, which makes for a very cranky baby by day’s end!

You decided this month that you are done with nursing during the day. There’s just too much to see and do for you to consent to being confined like that. This has been OK by me, as it expands my wardrobe possibilities quite a bit! You still do nurse in the morning and at night, so I still get my cuddle fix with you… It seems like your food repertoire has stalled, since your chewing capabilities are still limited. I should get a food grinder and see how much you’ll take from it. After eating it happily the first few times, you are off of fish for now; but you have never met a strawberry you didn’t love…

Another recent change for us: your days of Naked Playtime are over, after one accident too many. We made it through many, many months without incident, and now, well… let’s just say you’re not so predictable. Naked Playtime has been replaced with Diaper Playtime, which has made its loss a bit easier to bear…

We had some big events this month – you were baptized, you had your first haircut, and you had your picture published in the paper (again!) You are also quite sick at the moment, having finally caught the bug that Chad and I started battling weeks ago. You get mad now when I take stuff that you shouldn’t be playing with away from you. You can sort through the food on your tray and pick out the bits of cheese and stuff every last one into your mouth within seconds of them being put there. You give me bear hugs and nuzzle into my neck in a way that I would pay money for. You seem to be getting a bit more sociable, but you have this adorable way of looking first at either Chad or I for approval before you will engage with someone; and an even more adorable way of trying really hard not to smile out in public, even when you find something funny, and it results in a big smirk that sometimes does overcome you and crack wide open into a grin.

How much do you weigh this month? A lot. How tall are you? Tall enough. I don’t think I’m going to keep getting you weighed and measured; I know you’re growing healthy and strong, and I don’t need the numbers anymore to tell me that. At ten months old, you are really coming into your own. Today marks your friend Autum’s first birthday. Your own will be here all too soon.