Fifteen Months

Dear Harry,

Mommy's camera died and for some reason that resulted in no fourteen month letter. I'm sorry :( I'm especially sorry because a lot happened that month. You went from taking a step or two, to doing the Frankenwalk across the room, to walking full time. We went apple picking and visited a pumpkin patch and took a hay ride, which may have been the highlight of your young life. You were so excited to be up close and personal with a tractor. You took your first trip to the Aquarium. On Halloween, you went to your first football game with us and Papa and Grandma P, where you saw Mommy and Daddy's alma mater beat Papa's. That night, you were a monkey for Halloween. We pushed you in your red wagon, then you got out and pushed the wagon for a while. It was unseasonably warm, so we regretted not outfitting you in the Bam-Bam costume we planned, which we called off because we thought you'd be cold, but instead you got sweaty in your warm, snuggly monkey outfit. As you will someday learn, hindsight is always 20-20. The next weekend, we went to see Aunt K and Big Papa to celebrate Big Papa's 93rd birthday.

The camera is still broken but we've done our best to use the older camera. I'm sorry there aren't many good pictures from this month, but we'll hopefully have the good camera fixed and home soon.

This month, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Papa and Grandma P and three of your uncles. Everyone wanted to find good toys for you, so Uncle T went to the basement and hunted around for his own toys from when he and Mommy were kids, and we got out our old blocks, and you had a ton of fun. We discovered that you love cranberries, but not turkey. It was a rather bizarre discovery. Thanks to you, we actually had dinner at a reasonable hour for once, which you may one day discover is a rare occasion with Papa. Though it was later than promised, so you had to go right to bed when you were done eating all those cranberries. The next day, we had Thanksgiving Part II with Grandpa and Grandpa and Auntie T and Great-Grandpa. You mainly ate Grandma's cinnamon bread, which I think is what most of us would do if we were fourteen months old and people let us do that. Grandma also gave you your second haircut. You look fabulous. The next day, we took advantage of the warm weather and went to the park to swing and go down the slide and explore the tunnels (and show off the new haircut).

You had your second ever visit with Santa this month. Last year, you were less than two months old (as we went on Veteran's Day), so we didn't expect much. This year, you were about equally non-plussed. No tears, but no smiles either. The best photo was one with you two looking at each other. It may end up as our Christmas card if we can't get a better one before we need to order them.

Yesterday, we got our Christmas tree! It was cold -- very, very cold. We bundled you up in your much-hated coat and hat and gloves and wrapped a blanket around you in the stroller. But your cheeks still got red, so we tried to pick quickly. I think we ended up with our best tree yet -- not just our best in your lifetime but the best your dad and I have had in our ten Christmases together. Hopefully we'll decorate it soon. But it looks great as-is. We didn't manage to get an official monthiversary shot this month, but we did take some photos by the tree, so one of those is the header for this letter. I hope that's okay. We'll try to do a real one in January!

Finally, last night we took you to Zoolights at the Stone Zoo. It was a little underwhelming, but it was nice to get out and do something different and in the holiday spirit. The lights were nice, and you liked the animals you were able to see, few as they were. We took pictures, but we used a film camera and haven't had them developed yet. Film camera -- that must be a totally foreign concept to you :)

I'm excited for the upcoming month. We will celebrate Christmas, and we won't be doing it in the car! Hooray! We should also get some time to spend together -- a whole week with nothing to do but enjoy one another's company. And I'm really looking forward to it.

All my love,

Mommy

Thirteen Months

My little munchkin,

I thought it was crazy when you turned one, but now you're more than one and it seems even crazier. You are really becoming a kid. You can take at least a few steps, and you don't drink from bottles, and you wear size 5 shoes -- with real soles! When did you get so grown up?

Though your birthday was last month, this month, you had a birthday party (since you were out of town for a wedding on your actual birthday). Your closest family and friends were all there. You did a lot of pushing of things (your car, your wagon -- including when other kids were in it) and you ate a cupcake. It was your first taste of sugar, and you seemed uncertain at first, but you caught on. But only after Grandma smeared some icing in your mouth. You then separated the top of the cupcake from the stump and waved the stump around, mashing it in your hair, then throwing it on the ground. You were quite a mess by the time you were done. And you did not like getting cleaned up.



Honestly, one of the biggest developments this month were the ones that were the least obvious. You really started to figure things out. You figured out how to open the latch on the cupboard with the DVDs. Strangely, you take out the same one every time -- Madagascar on BluRay, which is funny since we don't have a BluRay player. Perhaps one day. You also became obsessed with phones and have, sadly, figured out how to push random sequences of buttons on my (old) cell phone -- sequences I can't seem to identify, as my phone stopped ringing for several weeks. You have also figured out how to change the channel on the DVR without using a remote and how to change the volume on the receiver when it's off so that when someone turns the TV on it blasts at an obscene volume. Awesome. Maybe our decision to let you watch the Pats on TV wasn't such a good idea.

Finally, one of my favorite of your discoveries has been your discovery of the value of fitting in. To be clear, it's not my favorite because I want you to want to fit in. Rather it's my favorite because it is absolutely hysterical to watch you when you hear others around you laughing and realize that while you don't get the joke you don't want to be left out of the fun, so you let out a "ha, ha, ha" that is so obviously fake it makes everyone laugh harder. It's adorable. That said, sometimes you're better off not getting the joke -- just because everyone else is laughing doesn't mean it was actually funny.

Whether or not we make you laugh or merely make you fake laugh, you certainly make us laugh. Our big boy.

All my love,

Mommy

One Year

My wonderful little boy,

It seems wholly impossible that it has been a year since you came into our lives. As cliched as it is, it feels like just yesterday that you were born, but I can't really remember our life without you. In that year you have gone from being a helpless newborn to being a fiercely determined, rambunctious little boy. I have loved every minute of being your mom, even the minutes where you bit hard enough to draw blood or screamed for no reason or threw all your food on the floor for the dog. Every. Minute. They have been the best 525,600 minutes of my life.

This month has been full of fun. You rediscovered books -- and remembered that they are not just for eating. You love to flip the pages and look at the pictures. You love your big picture books and Beep Beep Peekaboo and Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy. You also love Alligator Alphabet, requesting it be read MANY TIMES after almost every nap -- you see the painting on the wall and want to touch the animals (mainly the yak and the zebra), so we read the book instead. Unsurprisingly, your first word was book. And even less surprisingly, your second was dog. You continue to be slightly obsessed with the dog.

You are also really into your walking toys. You love walking, but you can't quite do it on your own yet, so you spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time pushing your truck across the room, walking around it to get to the other side, then pushing it back. It was a happy day in our house when you discovered that you could walk to the other side to push it back, ending the days of sitting down and crying. You also enjoy walking the truck to the airplane, and the airplane to the giraffe, or any of them to a piece of furniture that you can cruise along to get to the next thing, whether it be another walking toy, another piece of furniture, the exersaucer (you love being able to walk around it and check out the toys from the outside), your music table, or your workbench. I think you have too many toys.


This month you also took your first step, down at Grandma Ps beach house, where we spent Labor Day with Papa and Grandma P and your cousins and your uncles and aunt. I don't think the step was on purpose -- you let go, took one step, and fell down -- but you did do it. While there, you also took your first dip in the Atlantic. It was definitely more successful than the Pacific. You liked it so much that, when we were sitting on the beach, you took my hands and walked me back down to the water to go back in, wading in up to your chest and laughing away. I am so glad you have decided you like the water. Now that you bathe in the big boy bathtub and spent time in a pool both at our house and at daycare, maybe it seems more familiar. Or maybe you just knew that this was your ocean. I'm happy either way.

I'm sorry that you had to wake up in the morning on your first birthday in a pack n play in a hotel room, but daddy's cousin got married and we had to go. You did get to celebrate with a belgian waffle, followed by your first haircut (it was getting a bit shaggy around the ears), thanks to Grandma. We spent the evening at Fenway Park, where you got to see your name on the scoreboard, along with birthday wishes from your dad and me. You also got to see the Red Sox win for the sixth time this year -- this time from excellent seats on the first base line. You held up a sign telling everyone it was your birthday, which everyone in our section loved but no one on TV saw. You were on TV, though -- in the background for every left-handed batter but not with the sign. We'll save it -- you have a lot of birthdays ahead of you.

My sweetpea, my munchkin, my big guy, my baby boy. I love you with all my heart, on this, your first birthday, and for every day before and every day yet to come.

Mommy

Eleven Months

Dear Harry,

It seems completely unreal to me that you are eleven months old, only one month shy of a full year. More accurately, it seems unreal to me in the abstract that you are eleven months old, but, when I look at you and see the little boy you have become and think back to the baby you were, it seems very real. Because you have become a little boy.

After many months of frustration on your part, you finally figured out crawling this month. Your style is a little funny -- you use your hands, one knee and one foot. It looks funny, but you're quite quick. And within two weeks of figuring that out, you had mastered getting to sitting, pulling to standing and cruising. You love the new-found mobility and freedom. And you get into everything, seemingly drawn to the things that are least appropriate, more drawn the more we try to keep you away. You love the dog's bones, and his food, and the bottles in the wine rack. In a room full of your toys, with a dog bone tucked away in a corner, you will somehow sense the bone and make a beeline for it, getting it into your mouth before we've realized that you've taken off.

You made your first trip up to the cottage this year. We did the drive overnight in both directions to ensure that you slept, which, of course, ensured that we did not. The weather wasn't great -- rainy, overcast, cool enough that you needed footie jammies and more pants than we brought -- but we made our best of it. Daddy and Grandpa made you a beach, which makes them pretty awesome. You went out on the boat, sat in the water (though you did not like to go swimming, which makes Mommy a little sad) and played in the sand. You got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa and Great-Grandpa, as well as your cousin B.



You also visited the place in Maine where Mommy's family has gone for 57 years. You are now the fifth generation to have been up there. I wish we could have been there for longer than a weekend. Maybe next year. Maybe by then you'll be ready to try sailing!

After eight months of being a pretty great sleeper, with all the new stuff, you started to have a harder time sleeping. It started when we were on vacation, but continued on and off when we got home, so maybe it wasn't just that you hated the borrowed pack n play. When we put you down, or when you wake up at night, you push yourself to sitting and begin to cry. With some regularity, you have begun to require rocking and/or singing in order to fall asleep, which is exhausting, especially in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if your brain and/or body is on overdrive, or if you're teething, or if we've been feeding you something that is bothering you, but I hope you go back to sleeping well soon.

You have also had a lot to say this month. You still don't have any words, or at least no words that Daddy and I can recognize, but you certainly spend a lot of time talking, often quite loudly. You are not a quiet child. I think you get this from Mommy's family. You also figured out this month that your toy crates had toys in them. It was pretty funny to watch. Of course, once you knew where we had hidden it, you immediately took that dang butterfly back out, putting it and it's tremendously annoying songs back into circulation. We had enjoyed the reprieve.


It has been truly wonderful getting to watch you grow and learn and explore this past month. Now if we could just work on the sleeping thing...

With all my love,

Mommy

Ten Months

My dear sweetpea,

I'll admit it. This month was tough. I think all the not-crawling finally got to you, and you made sure daddy and I knew it any way you could. There was a lot of biting, and a nursing strike that I was sure was early weaning, and yelling. Lots and lots of yelling.

I found myself very frustrated a lot of the time, frazzled in a way I hadn't really felt since you were born. But every time I wanted to get angry with you, I remembered that you were probably more frustrated than I was. There are just so many things that you want to be able to do and seem convinced that you should be able to do, but you can't quite master them. And you don't even have words to explain how frustrating that is. I kept thinking back to when I spent the summer in France and all of a sudden found myself overwhelmed with homesickness in a way I totally didn't expect. My host sister thought I'd feel better if we went to an American movie with French subtitles, so we went to see Mrs. Doubtfire. But when we got there, it turned out to be Mme. Doubtfire, and the jokes just didn't translate properly into poorly-dubbed French and were delivered by someone other than Robin Williams. It wasn't funny at all, and I didn't feel less alone. And I cried, because that moment so perfectly captured everything I had been feeling. And I HAD words, in two languages, but just couldn't find any in either language that could really express my sense of disjuncture. So I'm impressed that you don't cry, that you only yell in frustration. It must be so hard to feel so much and be so unable to do anything about it.

Thankfully, after ten days the nursing strike now appears to be over (though I'm afraid to put it in writing for fear of jinxing it), and "gentle" seems to be working in conjunction with holding your hand tightly to deal with the hitting, but there's still no crawling, so there's still a lot of yelling and some biting for good measure. I am hoping this is not a brief window into what you will be like at 2, as you seem to be very strong-willed.

Good thing for you that you are also very cute.

This month also marked a few other firsts, including your first trip to the zoo. Daddy and I took you there with Papa. We saw some cool animals, but a lot of exhibits were closed. I'm sure we'll go back soon, though.



At your last doctor's appointment, we discovered that you actually had grown a lot, moving from the 18th to the 62nd percentile in weight and from the 75th to the 85th in length. I guess it wasn't our imagination. Also, Dr E gave you the okay to start on new foods (i.e. foods that are not fruits, vegetables and cereal). You now eat black beans and kidney beans, yogurt, cheese, bread, bagels, waffles, pancakes, scrambled egg yolks, tofu and many other tasty treats, including a couple of new vegetables. The best? Cheese. Followed by black beans and yogurt. The worst? Tofu, broccoli and cauliflower. You are pretty positive that none of these is food -- if you eat it by accident, you pull it back out and make a lovely face. This from the same boy that will eat wood chips. You have a strange palate. Also, you have decided that you are completely done with being fed and insist on self-feeding. This is messy. But it's nice that you have an area in which to assert your independence.

Speaking of you and feeding, you also learned how to give the dog a treat, though you did think it was for you at first:

I must admit, I worry a little about your lack of crawling, even though Dr E said not to and even though I always swore I would not be that type of mom. I know some babies aren't into it and go straight to walking. That would be fine with me. I worry mainly, though, because you are into it, you just can't figure it out. For three months now (maybe more?), you have been so desperate to crawl, pushing on hands and knees, rocking and . . . scooting backwards. You have become more desperate but don't seem any closer to forward movement. I hope you master it soon, for everyone's sake, even though Daddy and I really don't want to childproof. I can't wait to see the look of accomplishment on your face when you finally put it together.

Through it all, sweetpea, through the yelling and the biting and the nursing strike and the hitting, I love you with all my heart. I always will.

Love,

Mommy

Nine Months

Dear Harry,

I can't believe how quickly you are growing up. Your ninth month was remarkable in large part because of how unremarkable it was. You didn't really learn anything new -- you just kept on doing the things you've been doing. Generally speaking, you nap well, you eat well, you sleep well. You have a lot to say, but none of it is at all word-like, or even proto-word-like. Some of the time (okay, much of the time), I'm convinced you are communicating with the dog.
You don't crawl or army crawl or scoot on your bottom, but you do get around, mostly by pushing with your arms while on your belly or on your hands and knees, going in reverse. You then want to see something to one side or another, so you push yourself in a circle with your arms, and then you push backwards in a new direction. You roll on your right shoulder (yes, always the right, so you don't make any real progress), back and forth, making sure you know what is above you too. But you can't seem ever to move to where you want to be, always moving instead further and further away. I can't imagine how frustrating that must be.

You also love to stand. Mostly holding on to fingers, but you have also discovered that the activity table can be fun. So long as someone is there to catch you if you topple. Thankfully for us, you have not figured out that you can move your feet and go places while standing, so for now you enjoy the view and work on bouncing up and down. Always a good time. Your dad and I fear the day when you figure out you can really get around on your own. (We are a bit delinquent on our baby-proofing.)


You got your third tooth this month, and all of a sudden the biting stopped. Thank you! Apparently, your third tooth was the cause of three months of biting. I'm sorry teething is so tough for you, at least with respect to the top teeth. I hope the fourth, which seems very close to the surface, is less painful -- for your sake and mine.

Your second Red Sox game was more fun for everyone involved. We all got to see most of the game -- and you even took a nap in Daddy's arms. Everyone kept telling us that their own kids/grandkids/nieces and nephews would not have behaved nearly so well. The only time you fussed or cried was when you hit yourself in the face, which wouldn't have made you cry except that you were very tired. Within three minutes you had fallen asleep.

For new foods, we introduced you to apricots, blueberries, watermelon, and kiwi. You loved them all -- especially blueberries, since you can feed them to yourself easily. On that note, you've become quite skilled with finger foods. Over the course of the month, you went from picking things up with your fist and failing to get them into your mouth to picking things up with your fingers and putting them in your fist and using the other hand to get them into your mouth to picking things up with your fingers or your fist and actually getting them in there. You have also started really chewing, which is very strange to us. So we've been giving you a lot more for you to self-feed. We told Miss M she could do the same and let you try soft foods if the other kids were having them, but she took some liberties with that invitation. We asked her to limit it to foods you had tried before. She decided to start with french fries. Needless to say, we learned that you like both potatoes and fried food.


You're a wonderful little boy, Harry. No longer a baby, but really a little boy. I am so lucky to have you in my life.

Love,

Mommy

Eight Months

Dear Harry,

As you can see, this month we learned that you are no longer interested in sitting patiently and smiling for the camera. If there is a piece of paper nearby, it will go straight in the mouth and become damp and crumpled and slowly disintegrate, leaving big wet pieces in your mouth that I have to scoop out with my fingers (or just let you swallow them). Not that this happens often or anything. This was also the month when I realized that I have no idea how or whether one is supposed to discipline a baby, or at least prevent a baby from doing things that are harmful to him, or to, say, those around him. I should probably figure this out soon, though, before you gauge my eyes out with your pointy little fingers with their always-sharp, always-ragged nails or pull out all my hair with your grabby hands or bite my nipples straight off. Again, not that these things happen often or anything.
I feel like I missed you a lot this month. Like last month, I missed you because I saw you less than I did before. I just hate that this month was even less than last. I worked late more than once and made it home just in time for bath, or just in time for bed. And that makes me sad. I also had a Vestry meeting, and a Finance Committee meeting, and a Vestry retreat. Church is important, as is taking a role in its governance, but I hate missing time with you all the same.


You went to the park for the first time (and second and third) this month. You loved the swings. Really, really loved them. You also checked out a couple of different slides and the see-saw and those things that are mounted on a giant spring. The swing was definitely the biggest hit.

This month was also your first trip to Fenway to see the Sox. You mainly seemed to enjoy the folks sitting behind us who kept smiling at you and trying to entertain you (at the expense of your nap). We didn't see as much of the game as your dad and I usually do, and it was a bit chilly, and our seats weren't great, but it was fun anyway. We have tickets to many more games this summer, so I hope you had a good time!

Given that baseball season is starting, it seems fitting that it is finally warming up outside. You haven't spent a ton of time outside in months (with us -- you go outside at daycare every day, so long as it's at least 35 degrees, which I really like about your daycare), and I'm pretty sure you had no memory of those early times in the sun. I think your favorite thing about being outside is getting to spend time with the dog while he plays. Your love for him grows each month, and it's wonderful to watch that relationship develop. You started saying a lot of consonants this month, but my favorite is "Wu," which you say when you see the dog. I'm pretty sure it's woof. So sweet.

You tried some new foods, like you do every month. This month was pumpkin, acorn squash, barley, and mango. You seemed to enjoy them all, but I feel like you spit up more when you had pumpkin after a run of very infrequent spitting-up, so maybe we'll hold off on that for now. I wish mangoes weren't such a pain in the rear to prepare for you, because you really seemed to like them. On that note, I'm cool with you liking acorn and butternut squash, as well as bananas, as they are all easy and cheap. You also started eating some finger foods, mainly banana chunks, puffs, and cheerios. You tend to pick up food with your fists more than your fingers and then jam your whole hand in your mouth. Most often, the food sticks to your hand and you get very angry when you discover you didn't manage to eat anything. I know you'll figure it out eventually, though.
Finally, this month we got to celebrate our first mother's day together. Like every other holiday, we spent a lot of it in the car, driving to see all the ladies who love you, starting with the grammies and GG, then heading to Grandma and Grandpa's house. You chewed on some tissue paper, hung out in a box, and sat in your very own rocking chair for the first time. You and Daddy got me a potted lily, which was beautiful and should last a long time, just like my love for you.

I love you with all my heart,

Mommy