Dear Bean, You are now officially one month shy of a year old, and flying. Well, almost flying. You’re cruising about and doing this funny falling thing towards the next piece of furniture with no hands, and it makes you look like you’re ready for take off. I have every reason to believe you’ll learn how to RUN before you learn to stand or walk.
This month things have become unpredictable. You climb now. You reach things impossibly high and far out of the way. You cry on demand when you want something and can’t get it. You’re getting three more teeth in at once (you currently have four), and it’s making you clingy. And you’ve stopped liking to eat any solid foods except for macaroni and cheese, green peas, pear-strawberry sauce and yogurt. You show your disapproval for all other foods by rapidly spiting it out while making totally disgusted faces and ptttt noises..
You are so funny and thoughtful. You love to make us laugh, and you furrow your brow like I do, when you concentrate. You still love to dance, and certain music makes you boogie more than other kinds. You love anything with a Latin flavor, and you shake your bootie and bob up and down to the rhythm. It makes my heart melt with happiness, watching you dance! (Nothing is better than a guy who can dance, little man. Remember this when you’re in college.)
You’re also starting to babble in long strings of sounds that sound remarkably like words, and you’ve taken to not only copying my tone but also my gestures. Apparently I shake my head when I say ‘uh-uh’ (no), and now you do this. Not just when you mean to say no, but all the time, until it makes you dizzy. You and daddy have head shaking contests in fact, over dinner. You both give up when you can’t sit up anymore.
I’m beginning to understand that everything I say and do is absorbed by you. You watch what I like and how I like it, and what I do not like. You calculate where I’ll be going, based on where I’m looking, and sprint of full tilt, especially when it’s towards doors to forbidden rooms. You love kisses. And pushing buttons. Thankfully, though you do on occasion push MY buttons, mostly the kind of buttons you really love to pushing are on phones and remote controls. You’ll sit for a very long time pushing the buttons on the phone, but when it starts beeping at you, signaling the line is dead, you look up terrified and fling the phone away from you.
You’ve started calling me ‘mama’ regularly now, and Daddy, ‘dada’ and I think it is not a mistake that when I say ‘kitty’ you say ‘di-di.’ You point to things that you want, you reach out your hands, and when all else fails you wail. You must be so annoyed that we can’t read your thoughts already. I can’t wait until I can say that I love you more than anything else in the world and you’ll know what I mean. And I can’t wait until you can say you love me too.
Until then I’m content with your fierce little hugs wrapped around my neck.
Love, Mama