Last weekend, you turned ten months old. This month saw you celebrate your first Thanksgiving, complete with a jar of pumpkin pie baby food that smelled so good, I'd have eaten it but for the table full of other grown-up options. My dad and Daddy's parents were visiting and celebrated the holiday with us, and you took to all three of them. It was especially wonderful for me to see you meet my father for the first time. He just delighted in you, and you didn't fuss a bit when he held you!
This has been a month of physical advances for you. I should stop being astonished that you're growing - we'd be alarmed if you weren't - but it still seems so quick to me. And, in some ways, it is. You crawled before Anna did, I'm sure in large part so that you can chase her around the house and take her toys. And this month, you pulled up to stand and starting cruising along the furniture. We'd just dropped the crib mattress from its top setting, and we had to turn right around and drop it to the bottom setting this month so that you wouldn't vault yourself out with all the bouncing you do in there.
The down side to this ability is that you don't always know how to get back down once you're standing up and holding onto something. When you're awake and playing, it's pretty easy to figure out. But when you've woken up and started crying (read: banshees have nothing on you), you rattle your crib bars like a little inmate, and then...you get stuck. You're not really awake enough, and it's not really light enough, for you to figure out that you can lower yourself back to a sitting position from which you could topple back to sleep.
You have more hair. This isn't saying much, but the peach fuzz has now been replaced by a completely nuzzlable head of soft hair that looks like it wants to curl up at the ends. I still hold out hope that you'll end up with the red hair, but it's still too soon to tell. We're a long way from barrettes and ponytails, but I think we're starting to depart the "What a cute little boy!" compliments you receive despite being decked out in pink and floral from head to toe. I never thought that would bother me, but, well, it does. Don't they see the baby girl I adore? Evidently not. At least they have the cute part right.
You've also graduated out of your infant car seat. Gone are the days when I can get you from car to house without waking you up, alas! But gone, too, are the days of your being clearly uncomfortable in a seat that rapidly became too small for your ever-lengthening frame. Weight-wise and age-wise, you'll be facing the back of the car for a while yet, but height-wise, you were just crumpled up in that seat. Now you look tiny again, in the friendly confines of your swank new Marathon.
You've also begun using a sippy cup. It's debatable how much hydration you're actually getting from the water in the cup, but you're certainly getting the mechanics down. It didn't seem possible that you were already old enough for this ("you'll always be my baby" - repeat ad nauseum!), but one of those parenting sites' developmental milestone emails woke me up, and I handed you the sippy cup that day. You knew exactly what to do with it, and I felt a little silly for holding out on you.
On your ten-month birthday, you participated, along with Anna and Daddy and me, in our church's child dedication ceremony. (For those not familiar with the Unitarian Universalist deal, think baptism but with promises I can keep.) I debated dressing you up in the christening gown Anna wore - too dressy? Too chilly? The sentimentality of it all (and the advice of my chorale friends) won out in the end, and I layered you into the gown, which fit just right. You held your flower and let our minister show you off to the congregation. You dusted Anna's hair with your flower while the ceremony finished. And I felt like you - all four of us - became part of something bigger than us just then and that no matter what might happen, we would be cared for and supported by that bigger thing. I hope you always have that feeling of love and connection - it makes everything seem manageable and, beyond that, enjoyable.
Love,
Mama
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