Can it be that another month has gone by? I’m in shock this month. It’s been the quickest one yet. It seems like you have grown leaps and bounds developmentally in the past few weeks. You certainly are your own little person. Let’s talk about some of the cool – and challenging – things you’re doing this month.

EATING

We’ll start with a challenge. Your eating habits are changing dramatically. Whereas you used to eat anything and everything I put in your mouth without question, you have gotten very good at determining what something is and whether or not you want to consume it before I ever get it to your mouth. Often times you simply will not open your mouth. If you’re feeling a little more obstinate, you will swipe your hand at the spoon when it gets close to your face – hard – and spatter us with the offensive substance. If for some reason you decide to give whatever we’re offering you a try, and subsequently decide you don’t care for whatever is now in your mouth, you will spit it out or, more often, pull it out with your fingers and throw it on the floor. Some of this is related to the substances we’re feeding you. Honestly, we’ve spoiled you with salty cheese and other flavorful yumminess. I have been pretty liberal in the foods I’ve let you try. Baby food is bland, and you know what “real” food tastes like (and rightly prefer it). Even the things I make you (different pastas and soups), without salt, you don’t care for. You also refuse any kind of jarred fruit. You don’t like the metallic taste of it I suppose, given that you’ve been eating the fresh stuff since you started eating solids. I don’t blame you. I don’t like canned fruit either. Yogurt is the one thing you never refuse. You love it. You even ate it when you had the stomach flu (the only thing you ate for 3 days) a couple weeks ago, and then threw it up all over me.

We have a little better luck with finger foods. You much prefer to feed yourself. The problem is that you only have 2 teeth and still lack the motor skills to feed yourself with a spoon (although I’m going to try that soon), so what we can allow you to feed yourself is somewhat limited. I will say that the things you are able to chew with 2 teeth constantly surprises me. You mash, mash, mash everything up with your little gums and, thank God, have never choked. If something is too big or hard, you will take it out of your mouth and pull it apart with your fingers and put it back in. You eat a lot of bananas, avocado, toast chunks, cheese, small bits of chicken, turkey, tofu, pieces of really soft boiled potatoes and carrots, egg yolks. We let you try just about anything on our plates if we think you can mash it. You’ll even eat plain steamed broccoli if it’s in little chunks and you can feed it to yourself. My latest and greatest discovery is garden burgers. Soft enough for you to chew, hard enough for you to eat as finger food, full of grains and veggies, AND you like them. Score.

When, however, you are finished, you are capable of getting everything on your high chair tray onto the floor in about 3 seconds flat. I have to be paying attention and very fast to avoid huge messes. When you’re done, it *all* goes on the floor with lightning speed. Or if you don’t feel like eating whatever it is, you throw it on the floor. You love the clunk. It’s kind of exasperating. But I find that we have better luck keeping the floor clean-ish when I only give you 2 or 3 pieces of food at a time. It’s a slow and involved process, but you’re less likely to waste food when you only have a piece for each hand and your mouth. And I’m doing my best to consistently catch you right before you start doing it, show you the sign for “all done” (and you do it back to me now!!), smile, take your bib straight off and remove your tray. I want you to know that you can tell me you’re all done without creating a disaster zone. I try to be responsive to your cues and let you know I understand you. It seems to be working. In fact today, for the first time, you showed me the all done sign when I was feeding you cereal. I almost didn’t believe that you knew what you were saying, so I tried to give you one more bite and you refused it. My amazing, smart baby girl!

SIGNING

Since we’re talking about signs, you’ve also started signing“eat/food” when you’re hungry or when we put you in your high chair, “more” whenever your high chair tray is empty and you’re still hungry, and you wave ”bye- bye” every time you hear that phrase without any prompting from us. You also wave we’re getting ready to go somewhere and head for the front door. Your comprehension (or at least your ability to show us that you comprehend) seems to have grown exponentially this month. I think you know what we’re talking about most of the time. I need to learn more signs. But I have consistently started using all the ones I know every chance I get because you obviously understand and are perfectly capable of communicating with us in this way. It’s a total revelation to you and to us, awesome – to say the least – that you can tell us what you want now in a way other than crying. I’m so proud of you. You’re proud of yourself too I might add. You grin from ear to ear every time you sign anything to us.

TALKING

I don’t think you’re really saying anything new. It’s still mostly “Mama”s and “NaNa”s. But when you babble, I’ve noticed more inflection in what you’re saying. It’s like you’re starting to pick up on the particular lilt of American English. It’s starting to sound like a real language instead of just noises. Man, you are growing up so fast!

NO-NO

Another word I now know you comprehend? “No.” Do you always obey? No. But you most definitely understand what it means, and the tone of voice that accompanies it. I’ve started leaving a couple things out in your play area that you are not allowed to touch so that we can start teaching you that some things are “not for Waywee.” If you try to go for it – as you inevitably do at least a hundred times – I just say, “No, no. That’s Momma’s,” in a firm, serious  every time you do it until you get bored and move on. If you seem especially intent on getting it, I’ll tell you no and then remove you from the situation and give you something that it’s yours to play with. I’m trying to be consistent. It’s hard! I don’t want you to be one of those children that can’t go anywhere without havoc ensuing because you’ve never been trained to not touch things that aren’t yours. So, I’m starting early.  And we certainly try to pick our battles too. I don’t want “no” to be your first and favorite word, so I use it only in moments of instruction and try not to abuse it. You are a baby afterall, and there will be plenty of years of discipline and instruction ahead of us.

MOBILITY

As for your mobility, you’ve grown a little bit, but not as much as you have in other developmental areas. Your crawling is extremely proficient and you opt to get around that way most of the time. More and more you are pulling away from our hands in favor of your hands and knees. Just this week you got brave enough to walk between pieces of furniture that are close together . You still have one hand on something at all times, but now you will shift your balance and lean over to grab onto something that is just out of reach. You also now walk around with us holding on to only one of your hands. Sometimes you forget that you need to hold on to furniture, let go, and fall and bump your mouth on the coffee table. Ouch. No major injuries yet, although we have shed a few tears. Despite the fact that you’ve been walking with support for months, I still think it may be a month or two before you step out on your own. Your body and your feet are still so little. You’re balance isn’t quite there yet. You’ve also grown quite skilled at climbing the stairs, so I’m going to have to buy another gate to put at the bottom of the stairs to keep you from crawling up to the gate at the top and tumbling back down.

And you get into EVERYTHING.

TOYS

The new toys of the month? You love your little fisher price camera (a mini photographer in the making!), your stacking rings, your blocks, and most recently your xylophone and shape sorter. The latter two have special significance because they used to belong to me as a baby. I just dug them out of a box in the garage and cleaned them up for you. Toys used to be made well. I can’t believe how sturdy some of my old things are. Mima and Papi were nice enough to keep a whole bunch of Momma’s old things stored in their garage for a quarter decade so that you would be able to have some things that used to belong to me. It’s really cool. When you’re a little older, there will be other cool stuff we’ll dig out. One of the ones I’m most excited about an old Sesame Street Dollhouse type thing that is super awesome. In a year or two…

For now, you seem to like small things you can pick up and turn over and over in your hands, put in your mouth and throw across the room. That’s mostly what you can manage with the shape sorter right now, although you are pretty fascinated by trying to figure out how to get the ones inside on the outside. You’ve gotten your hand stuck in the oval one trying to accomplish their extraction. And you definitely mimic me putting them in the right holes. You will bang whatever one you’re holding against the container and look at me like “am I doing it right?” You are very adept at removing your stacking rings from the tower and kind of try to throw them back on, but you haven’t quite figured out the reassembly part.

You’re mostly interested in sucking on the xylophone baton, but you will also mimic me playing it when you’re in an alert sort of mood. And when we stack up blocks for you to knock down, you exhibit the ultimate girliness. Instead of plowing them over as any little boy would do, you take them off, examine them, and toss them aside very deliberately, one by one. You can now grab your own toys out of your toy bin too. You can’t always reach what you want, but you try and we help when you can’t manage it on your own. We are going to have to come up with some other means of storage because we’re running out of room and your birthday and Christmas are right around the corner. It’s hard not to spoil you. I can’t tell a lie.

CUTE STUFF

Cute things you do? You High Five.

Awesome.

You give hugs. The most Awesome. You will now give me a hug when I ask you to. You know the word and the meaning and you even give us sweet little moans when you do it. You are extremely affectionate and it breaks my heart and puts it back together multiple times every day. Not only do you hug us, you also hug your favorite toys  – usually Sammy (your sock monkey) or Topher (your groundhog).

Another cute thing you started doing this month? Dancing! When you hear music, or just when you’re really happy, you start to bounce up and down and sway back and forth. Of course, you also clap your hands if you’re sitting down, especially if we encourage you to. Your baby rhythm makes your Tia Carmen happy. She’s waiting for the day when she can teach you how to play her drums.

I’ll close with an admission. Lately I’ve been getting you out of your crib after you’ve gone to bed and rocking you for as long as you’ll let me. I’m so enjoying your newfound cuddliness. I don’t go in and wake you up. You are just the lightest sleeping person on the planet. No matter how quietly I try to check on you, you wake up at least 75% of the time. If you roll over and go back to sleep, I’ll leave you in the crib. But usually it startles you a little and you start to fuss, so I pick you up and comfort you. It goes against all my sleep-training knowledge to do it, but phooey on the experts. You have broken the rules at every turn. You’re a great sleeper as always and so far, when I put you back down after our rocking sessions, you don’t fight it. You haven’t once. You just go straight back to sleep. I’m going to keep doing it as long as you’ll let me because it’s just wonderful to feel your warm, limp, breathy body cuddling up against me and you’re growing up much too fast.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Next stop, your 1 YEAR BIRTHDAY!! I’m starting to plan it already. It’s gonna be a good time! Love ya, babe.