Letter: Month Ten

Dear E,

Today you turn ten months old. To celebrate, we had a new dishwasher installed. (Surprise!) With any luck, it will still be up and running when you’re old enough to pull your own weight around here…say in, three years or so. (Sheesh, it’s not like we would expect you to wash the dishes by hand as a preschooler: we’re reasonable people.)

Developmentally, it seems like the wheels in head have really started turning. You’ve started to express your own will which (shocker!) does not always agree with ours. You used to love eating Cheerios but then I gave you some of these baby cereal puffs (they’re shaped like stars). Once you had a taste of the good stuff, there was no going back. If I gave you Cheerios, you either ignored them or flicked them off the tray onto the floor. I tried mixing the stars in with Cheerios, but you would carefully pick the stars out and eat them and then dump the Cheerios on the floor. So we quit giving you stars (because we’re mean like that) and after a week or so of Cheerios, you seemed to realize that they were the only game in town and so you eat them now, but only grudgingly.

There was a week or so when you stuck your tongue out ever chance you got, which was pretty funny. But as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

You still prefer to roll around on the floor instead of crawling, at least when you’re with us. By watching the video monitor of you in your crib we discovered that you’re pretty good at creeping around on your tummy and that you get up on your hands and knees pretty well. But you don’t like crawling when we’re with you; you prefer to have us hold on to you so you can stand. Maybe you feel self-conscious and would rather to learn to crawl on your own and then amaze us by trucking across the floor one day out of the blue. Or maybe it amuses you to see us down on the floor making fools of ourselves and encouraging you to crawl. (If that’s the case, it means that you’ve probably inherited your father’s sense of humor.)

I’m trying to think back on what happened during August, but a lot of things are simply a blur; it was a pretty busy month. We actually got in to see the allergist (instead of having to wait until October as scheduled) and it turns out that you do in fact have an allergy to milk. Banishing dairy, eggs, and nuts from our diets has been a bit of an adjustment, but things are going well on that front. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you’ll grow out of your food allergy in a couple of years but if you don’t, we’ll deal with it.

Your dad started a new job, which was pretty stressful. But even when he’s stressed out at work, the first thing that he wants to do when he comes home is play with you. If you’re taking a nap, he’s disappointed and wants to know when you’re going to wake up so he can spend time with you because you’re the life of the party.

It’s so interesting to watch your personality develop and to find out who you are. When you do something new or amazing (as happens frequently), it’s like meeting you for the first time all over again.

Love,

Mama