9 months

Dear baby boy,

Today, you are nine months old! It's interesting--when your sister was a baby, I always thought she seemed so grown up, even when she was younger than a year. You, though . . . you're my baby. Even when you learned to sit up, crawl, eat real table food, wave . . . all of it . . . you still seemed so young. But nine months? Nine months sounds so old. You're not a little baby any more. You're a big boy, doing big boy things. I'm both excited and saddened beyond words that, day after day, you keep growing up.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the first year is SO amazing! Nine short months ago, you were a tiny, wriggly, snuggly, sleepy, helpless little newborn. Now? Now, baby boy, you are amazing. The things you've learned this month have left me shaking my head and smiling and laughing in bewilderment and amazement. You do adorable things like clapping and pointing at things. Your communication has exploded this month--you are starting to sign "more" and "all done." And, most amazing of all, you have started to talk!!

I first noticed when you were done nursing. You'd wave your arms to sign "all done" and then you'd say something that sounded remarkably like "ah-dah." I thought it was a fluke the first time, but after hearing you say it two, three, five, ten times, I knew it was true. You were saying "all done!" I told your daddy about it and that I didn't really want your first words to be "all done," and you know what he told me? "He's been saying 'ball' for a couple of weeks now." WHAT?! And then when I was telling your day care teacher this story, she said, "Oh yeah, he's been saying 'duck,' too." WHAT?!?!!? And then today, I swear I heard "book." It's still mostly babbles, but I'm so excited and amazed at how communicative you are already--even your babbles sound like full-blown conversations, complete with facial and vocal expressions. You are brilliant, baby boy.

Not only are your communication skills growing by leaps and bounds, but your physical skills continue to amaze (and scare!) me. To start with, you are, apparently, a climber. You show no fear in things that are too high or too low for you to reach--we've caught you climbing on top of toys, benches, steps . . . really anything you can get your little legs up onto. And if you are sitting on the couch (with me or Dad, of course) and you see something on the ground you want, you just go for it. There's no thought to "I'm about to fall off a piece of furniture." You just lunge your body at the ground and trust that we'll catch you. You do the same when I sit you at the top of the little plastic slide in the back yard--immediately thrust yourself down the slide with a huge smile on your face, trusting that I'll catch you. I have a feeling you're going to keep us on our toes, little boy.

And then there's the standing. That's right. Standing. At 8 months. I first noticed it when I was walking by one evening and you were standing between your dad's legs, both hands on a toy you had crammed into your poor teething mouth. "Um, look at Sam," I said to your dad. Of course, right then, you fell. When I told him you had just been standing there, not holding onto anything, he laughed and said I needed more sleep. And then you did it again, the next day. And you've continued to do it ever since. You are most stable when you're distracted and not thinking about it, but sure enough, you are standing on your own. When you combine that with the speed at which you are cruising along furniture now and moving back and forth from the coffee table to the couch, and I see the writing on the wall. Your dad and granddad have a bet about when you'll be walking: Dad thinks 10 months, Granddaddy thinks 11. I think mom wins if you're doing it at NINE.

Notice above where I said "poor teething mouth"? You broke another three teeth this month, bringing the grand total to six. Six teeth in seven weeks. You really don't have to do it all at once, you know. I believe that you're a big, strong boy even without you proving it like this.

The ultra-teething, combined with your continued on-again, off-again illnesses this month, have continued to do a number on your sleep. The last couple of weeks have been much better, though. You are going to sleep without too much of a struggle and are back to waking once a night to eat. We are still rocking you to sleep. I know we're going to have to break ourselves of that habit here pretty soon, but in all honesty, I have really loved rocking you to sleep every night. Most of the time it's easy, and I love holding your sweet sleeping form in my arms, love hearing your slow, deep, sleeping breath, love how at peace and comfortable you are in my arms. I know it's important that you learn to put yourself to sleep, but I will be so sad when the day comes that we have to start working on that. Until then, I will just soak up those dark, quiet, sleepy moments we still have.

Your pediatrician has also said that we really don't need to be feeding you at night anymore, but the thing is, your weight gain really suffered from the long months we tried to get you to take bottles and from the sick stretch this winter. Not only did you not gain as much as I'd like, you actually lost weight while you were sick. You are back on track now, and your eating is going great, but until I'm more comfortable with where you are, weight wise, I'm going to just keep on feeding you whenever you wake up hungry.

As for food, you are really doing great! We're on about half purees, half finger foods now (when you were six months old, you would NOT let us feed you purees, so we started with finger foods; then you got sick and stopped eating finger foods and started liking purees; now we are working you back toward finger foods again! You sure do keep us on our toes.). Your favorites are black beans, green beans, wheat bagel, graham crackers, apple slices, and veggie puffs. Oh, and meat! You LOVE meat! Any kind of meat so far has been a win . . . you even loved gnawing on the rib bones from our local barbecue restaurant. You still won't take bottles, so we've just stopped trying. I use my lunch break to nurse you every day. I know our nursing relationship is another thing, like the rocking to sleep, that won't last forever, so I'm trying to savor every moment while it lasts.

You are nine months old. Cruising. Talking. And still the cutest little boy that anyone's ever seen. Strangers come up to us all the time and tell us how adorable you are. Especially your eyes. Your dark, twinkly, gorgeous eyes. You smile at anyone and everyone, and love to talk-talk-talk in your special baby language. And still, still you snuggle me, bury your face in my neck, touch your forehead to mine. You are such a sweet boy, and you make every day sweeter for me, your sister, your dad.

Love you to the ends of the universe and beyond,
Mom