My amazing baby girl,
You are 11 months old now! Do you know what that means? It means you are only a few short weeks shy of being a whole year old! Soon you won't be a baby any more. You'll be a toddler, then a child, then a surly teenager! Ack. My whole life is flying by already.
But for now, you are still a baby. My sweet, sweet cuddly baby. When I get home from a long day at work, you love to just nestle against me with your head resting against my head. It's the sweetest feeling.
In just a few short days, my darling girl, you will no longer have to desperately cling to me trying to get some mommy-time when I get home from work. Because after Friday, sweetheart, I will be home, home, home. I'll still be spending a lot of time at the computer, cause we still have to pay the mortgage, but I can stop and cuddle you whenever you need it now. It's going to be awesome.
You've changed so much in the last month! I swear I go to work in the morning and when I get home you've mastered two or three new skills. One day you learned how to high-five and bop your head to music while I was at work! I think you just did that to help me feel less scared about leaving the security of a regular paycheck. When I see what I miss--in just a day--I know that quitting my job was the right thing to do.
You are fascinated by everything, and are desperate to grab everything. Once you get a hold of something, first you taste it, then you shake it, and if you don't like it you hurl it across the room. We pretty much let you pick up and taste most things (although I'm more relaxed about things like sticks and leaves than your daddy is), but we do draw the line at a few things: my glasses, drink glasses, and the camera.
You've really cemented your likes and dislikes in these last four weeks, and unlike most of the previous ten months, there have been a lot more tears. You get very frustrated because your brain is working at a faster pace than your body is, and when things don't go the way you want them to you get very angry and cry and cry.
You also cry now when we take something away from you that you were playing with. Inconsolably. It's very sad, really. I can't let you have toys in the tub anymore because you get SO MAD when we have to take you out and put them away. It's a lot like how your big brother, Hammer The Best Dog Ever, is with his toys, in fact. The funniest thing about the crying now is that you have figured out how that you should try to use crying to your benefit. It's just so clear when you are trying to manipulate me or your daddy. It's a shame, really, cause you don't know this yet, but your mommy happens to have a PhD in manipulation and it just ain't gonna work on me. Sorry, baby. It's probably not going to be a real issue until you're a little older though. Right now it's pretty easy to get you to switch gears when you don't get your way.
You are still, though, the happiest baby I know. Not only are you happy, but you are good. Really, really good. For instance, you wake up before we do every day. But you are absolutely content to stay in bed until you hear us wake up too. You just play in your crib, babbling to yourself. Sometimes you yell loudly trying to wake us up, but you'll stay in there as long as we stay in bed too. But the minute you hear one of us get up to go to the bathroom, you are ready! We get you up and bring you into the bed with us so you can nurse a bit before we go down and have breakfast. It's hard to pin you down to nurse these days; you have so much to do! So many things to see! The cat's whiskers to grab! You are now a champion roller, and in fact use that as a mode of transportation. You've rolled off the bed twice in the last month, bonking your head on the end table and the trash can respectively. Sure, you've been able to roll for a while, but now you are just so damned fast that I can't even adjust a boob before you roll off the bed. Now when I'm nursing you I have to always keep one hand on your little belly so that you don't roll away on me.
The other thing you like to do in the morning is stand on the bed or kneel and nurse. It's very funny. You hurl yourself at my boob and latch on fiercely while your little butt is up in the air. Cracks me up every day.
You've become a champion eater too. You love meatballs, and chicken fingers, and those funny little mashed-potato smiley faces. I do wish you liked fruit though--sometimes we have to trick you into eating prunes or you won't poop. It's kind of funny, actually. You'll get there.
We've started to introduce cow's milk to you in the last week or so, even though it's just a touch early. You like to drink milk (from a bottle) with your meals, and I'm hoping to quit pumping once I'm home full time. So we've been mixing the cow's milk with my breast milk and so far it's going really well. In another two weeks or so, I'll be free of that damned pump, and that is just awesome.
Don't worry, though--I have no plans for weaning you. You can nurse for a while longer. We'll let that one sort itself out, ok?
It's funny, but just when we thought you weren't going to crawl, you've just recently (as in the last few days!) begun to do a bit of crab crawling. I put you down to play with your toys in the morning and the next thing I know you are twenty feet away attempting to eat the dog's tail, electrocute yourself, or something else dangerous. This working-at-home thing is going to be challenging.
You have managed, somehow, to get even cuter this month. I'm not sure how--you were already the cutest baby I've ever seen--but you've done it. You make so many new faces now--my favorite being the 'monkey face' where you stick your tongue under your bottom lip and pull your face down. It's so funny. But you just get more and more expressive every day.
So many days your daddy and I look at each other with wonder and joy and just can't believe that you are here, that you are ours--our daughter! It's just the best thing that has ever happened to us, even better than when we found each other and fell in love (and that was pretty damned awesome--still is--so you know that's really saying something).
I think that you'll be walking pretty soon. You can pull yourself upright pretty easily now, although only when an appropriate surface presents itself. Our new awesome cushy ottoman sadly doesn't go all the way to the floor so when you try to use it, your feet just slide right under it instead. You'll get there though. You love to stand for long periods now, and you can very, very slowly cruise all the way around the ottoman. For some reason, though, standing seems to also require yelling. And boy oh boy, do you love to yell!
In fact, you vocalize nearly constantly now. We discovered that you love being in the swings at the park, and when you swing you actually have to shriek with glee. You also definitely have a word for cat--it sounds like "gah" but you only say it to the cat. We've declared it your first word. Even though you also have called your godmother "gah". We don't care.
We also think that you sometimes actually mean "daddy" when you say dada. It's hard to tell, though. You have yet to attempt "mama" or anything like it. But I can wait. After all, it took four years for us to have you--I can wait for you to say mama.
I'm off to start planning your big birthday bash. It's going to be a
little before your actual birthday, cause that was the day the
pavillion at the park was available (it's June 2) but it will still be
totally awesome. I never understood why people threw big parties for a baby's first year, but I totally, totally get it now. It's a celebration of surviving that first year and celebrating the awesomeness of you. And you have a new dress and everything.
I'm probably forgetting about a million things that you do that are new to the last four weeks, but I've gushed enough. You are the best thing in the universe right now, and I love you, oh god how much do I love you! It's funny, but just like "grief" wasn't a big enough word to describe how I felt about losing your big brothers, "love" isn't a big enough word to describe how I feel about you. It's a big, big love, my darling girl, and it gets bigger every day.
Happy 11th month birthday, my sweetie.
