Nine months

Posted December 1st, 2011 by Michelle

Dear Boo,

It’s hard to believe that you’ve been out in the world for as long as you were inside my belly.

You have utterly transformed our lives. We don’t sleep nearly enough, ever, as your day – and so our day – begins sometime between 4 and 5:30 AM. We don’t leave the house after about 6 PM every night, as we spend our evenings entertaining you until bedtime, and then, hanging out listening to the monitor as you blissfully snore away. My lunch hours, which used to be spent either in meetings or in front of the computer, now find me driving across town to feed you and kiss you a few dozen times. Instead of looking for the best $30 bottle of wine, I comparison shop diapers and tiny fleece coats embroidered with doggies and bunnies and trucks. I walk around in a perpetual sleepless haze, trying to get my job done while also trying to be the best mom I can be.


And yet, my life is a thousand times richer, every moment. You are madly tenacious, curious, stubborn, and fiercely happy when you get your way, and fiercely upset when we refuse you anything that strikes your fancy. Watching you explore and discover is the best entertainment I know. You have been having insane developmental leaps the last few months and it’s hard to keep track of them. A week after your seven month birthday, you figured out how to sit up on your own. A couple of weeks later, you figured out how to crawl, and you were about eight months old the first time you pulled yourself up to standing on your own. Now, you do this crazy crab-crawl all over the house and we just try to keep up with you. You are transfixed by all reflective surfaces – mirrors, windows, the stove – man, do you love the stove – and you, awesomely, tend to prefer the boxes that toys come in over the toys themselves. You don’t stand by yourself yet, but several times you’ve tried to balance on your own, and you fall pretty spectacularly, too.

We started you on solid food when you were about five months old, and you ate with gusto… until about three weeks ago. Now, we can only interest you in yogurt and the occasional waffle or green bean. And you still only have the two bottom teeth that came in months ago.

And you’ve had your mishaps. Last month, when your mama turned her back for about three seconds, you fell off of our very high bed onto a very hard wood floor. You weathered that much better than your mama did. You’ve also cut your mouth pretty badly on cardboard boxes a couple of times, and shut your fingers in many a drawer. At eight months you got the nasty “hand, foot and mouth” disease, followed closely by an ear infection, and you’ve had a bad cold basically since you started daycare.

And your sleep. Oh, your sleep. You do sleep through the night now, for the most part, except that your night ends in the wee hours of the morning. We are often up for hours before the sun even thinks about making an appearance. You spend those early morning hours playing and laughing and generally having a good time, though, so really, we can’t complain.

Best of all, you spread joy. You smile at strangers and friends alike. You want to touch and experience everything and everyone you encounter. You love your mama and your daddy maybe as fiercely as we love you. And when you go to bed at night, I miss you so terribly until you start talking at us to let us know you are awake.

Thanks for choosing us, you perfect, sweet, beautiful little boy.

I love you,

Mama