I do?

Jon and Cole,

At the age of six and two, you are incredibly funny kids and perhaps a
little too close.

Jon in the bathroom, "Cole, go get Mom and ask her to wipe my bum."

Cole running away, "Okay." Cole stops, returns, "Wipe you bum?"

"Yes, ask Mommy to wipe my bum."

"I do?"

"Sure, you can wipe my bum."

Cole, "Okay."

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Up

Cole, this is a little story from your mother--I think she tells it perfectly:

"Thanks to the genius of the creators of "Up," my two year old when
asked, "What does a puppy say," sharply turns his head to the side and
yells, "Squirrel!"

Makes me laugh every time.

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Sent from my mobile device

Another test

Another test

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Sent from my mobile device

Email blog test

Test test

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Sent from my mobile device

11 months later

Dear Cole:

It’s been 11 months since I last wrote, at which point you were 11 months old, so it seems fitting—though hugely embarrassing—that now would be the time for me to come back to tell you just how much more you have enriched our lives in the last 11 months. 11 months ago we didn’t think we could love you any more than we already did, and you’ve proven us wrong—you make us adore you more and more each day. Your personality has truly exploded. You have the most charming smile, with your sparkly eyes and cute dimples; and then you have your funny smile, where you wrinkle your nose and show all your teeth as you smile. For months, you have been really good at mimicking intonations, and now you are getting really good at repeating words. You have quite a collection of words, a few of which you pronounce clear as day, but it is others—the ones you assign very unique pronunciation to--that I really want to capture on video. In the meantime, here are a few:

La la doo = cock a doodle doo
La la tee = brush, brush teeth
Fa cha = fire truck
Bee cha = big truck
Woof = puppy
Mo = come on
Moo = moon
Bah = bus, bug, ball, book, bear
Poo bah = Pooh bear
Peechees = fishes (gold fish)
Peechy = peach
Sue = shoes

You love, love, love your brother. You want to do everything Jon is doing. This video shows you following Jon around and being a copy cat.

Jon adores you right back. The two of you get into squabbles at times, mostly because you want to have whatever Jon is having or because you are breaking apart something Jon is putting together. But most of the time, the two of you get along wonderfully. You truly do have the best brother.

You love to dance. You ask for the music to be turned on, and then you say, “Mama. Mo. Da da da” (Mama, come on, dance, dance, dance). And then you dance and spin and jump. Speaking of jumping, “your baby’s development” e-mail at 22 months said that you should be a few months away from a real, two-footed jump. Yet you have been jumping with you both feet up, sometimes five or six jumps in a row for at least a month or two now. You are amazingly coordinated—you run, jump, catch and throw the ball—and love doing it. Considering that you didn’t start rolling over until 8 or 9 months, I find your advanced coordination abilities amazing. I wonder if you will be into sports when you get older.

You love the water and yet completely dislike pools. You could play in the bath or simply splash your hands under the running water in the sink for hours (ad now that you are tall enough to reach the faucet in the half-bath downstairs, I am worried our water bill is going to go up). Grandma Pam’s water fountains were your favorite part of the garden, and you insisted on turning them on every time you went outside (“mo aqua”). Yet, you want nothing to do with a pool, especially public pool. It took you several days before you were comfortable enough to get your feel into the baby pool on our patio. But public pools—no way. You are very interested and actually request to go in the water, and then immediately back out. You lift up your legs as far as they can go and climb up the body of the person holding you—doing everything you can to make sure the water doesn’t touch you. You were like that last summer, but after 10-15 minutes of gently dipping your feet in the water, we could coax you into the pool. But not now. We tried on several occasions this summer—from Iowa’s Adventure Land to a local pool to the splash park at Sesame Place—but we no success at all. As much as your brother loves all things water, I am surprised that his enthusiasm has not rubbed off on you since you love doing everything Jon does. Perhaps next summer…

Eleven months is a long time, and I hope to write down some of your adventures of these months that didn’t make it into cyberspace in a timely manner. Like your first birthday party, your trip to the mountains of Deep Creek Lake, to the beach and to Iowa, your ever so odd eating habits, and much more.

For now, at the end of month 21, I want to remember…

… your strong determination to take your shoes off as soon as you enter a house (I wonder if you got that from your brother, who continued to take off his shoes when we looked at several model houses recently).

…your love of buckles and your uncontrollable desire to buckle any buckle you see.
…your excitement over every bug you see (even the dead ones, like the squished one we saw at Staples last night, and you would not let Daddy leave the store until he saw the bug).

…your golden wispy hair, which gets so soft after a bath and so curly when you sweat (and you sweat a lot!).

…your sweet ‘I wuv woo’s and how excited you get when we come home from work.

…how much you love to push a baby stroller outside (despite our attempt to transition you to a less ‘girly’ task of pushing a toy grocery cart instead).

…how you refuse to give kisses, but give out the biggest bear hugs.

…how much you love playing ball and how just about every trip to a toy store ends up with us bringing home another ball. You love to throw it, roll it, bounce it, you name it.

…how you must be covered by not one but two blankets when you go to sleep, and how your crib entourage has suddenly expanded from Baby, Elmo and Gon-gon the monkey, to an additional baby, a kitty (titi abie), two puppies, a spider (and I am sure something else I am forgetting).

…how you recognize the places we drive to and the reasons for going there. You point to the local nursery to tell us that chickens live there, you point to the metro station to tell us that daddy rides that train, you show us where Lala lives (Lauren, the baby in our nanny-share arrangement) and where Sky lives (our neighborhood friend).

You have enriched our lives in ways words cannot describe. Likewise, there aren’t enough words to tell you just how much I love you and how grateful I am for you.

All my love,
Mama

12 months stats

Height: 30 3/4" (85th percentile)
Weight: 24 lbs 12 oz (75th percentile)
Head: 18 7/8"
Teeth: 4 bottom middle, 4 top middle

11 months

Dear Cole:

Today, you turn 11 months old, and I am both excited and sentimental. I am excited because your birthday is approaching, and I can’t wait to see you eat cake and tear through the wrapping paper on your presents and delight everyone with your smiles. But I am also sentimental because a month from now, you will no longer be considered a baby. You will be 1, and you will be a toddler (although I am pretty certain you will not be toddling yet by that time). This is your last non-birthday birthday, the last time we count your age in months instead of years. One, three or six months from now, we will tell people that you are 1, not 12, 14 or 17 months. The end of your babyhood is no longer a distant dot on the horizon. It is here, right in front of me. But, as I tell your brother, you will always be my baby.

This month had some good, bad and the ugly. Your biggest accomplishment this month is learning how to climb the stairs, and now you want to do nothing else but. You always have a huge grin on your face when you do it—it’s as if you simply can’t stop giggling. We started moving one of our armchairs in front of the stairs to block your way, yet you put such valiant effort in trying to either move the chair or try to squeeze your way through on the side of the chair. This morning, I saw you looking under the chair, assessing if you can fit your body under it and get through that way. We are working with you on teaching you how to get down safely, and you have not been particularly interested in paying attention because you only want to go up. But today, several times in a row you went both up and down, and gave yourself a huge round of applause once you got back to the bottom of the stairs, so perhaps we are turning the corner.

The bad/the ugly of this month has been your third ear infection in less than three months. You just finished the round of amoxicillin for ear infection #2, and a few days later, you got another cold with a runny nose. Several days later you started pulling on your ears, but otherwise you were acting fine, so we held out hope that perhaps it was related to teething. Well, one night, you woke up at midnight and then continued waking up crying every hour. You would only sleep in my arms—and even then, not for long. By 4 am, you began to run a fever, something that hasn’t happened since you were just a couple months old. Tylenol took the edge off, but you still weren’t yourself during the day. You slept much better the following night, but I decided to call the doctor nonetheless. At the appointment, we discovered that you had two ear infections, and one of them was so bad that it ruptured your ear drum. And this one exactly a week to the day since we last went to the doctor and got a clean bill of health from your previous infection. So now you are taking augmentin, an antibiotic that’s a step up from amoxicillin. The pediatrician said that if you get another infection soon after this one, we may have to go see an ENT. Ugh. Six days after you started taking this new medication, you broke out in what to me looked like hives, so I took you to the doctor again to rule out an allergic reaction to the drug. After consulting with several people in the office, they determined that it was not an allergy but a viral rash, probably associated with your cold. The antibiotic has also seemed to loosen your bowels, so you have the meanest, angriest diaper rash, and to hear you scream in pain when I change your diaper just breaks my heart. It is a different type of cry than any other—not angry, not frustrated, not upset—just so hurt. I feel a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. It will get better, my baby, it will get better soon. Of all the ointments I tried, Aquafor seems to be the one causing you the least pain, so we’ll stick with it for a while.

But despite being sick for a good portion of this month, you are still such a delightful baby. Your worst days, the days when you are sick, are still better than ‘average’ days of some other kids. You take it in stride, you smile, you do your usual things, you eat well—the only difference is perhaps that your patience is a little shorter than usual and you are little more likely to ask to be carried.

You love looking at books, flipping the pages for long periods of time. You are not as interested in being read to—you like to ‘read’ the books by yourself, on your own terms. You love playing ball, and you are really good at handling the ball—be it a big soccer ball or a small ball the size of your hand. You love to throw and kick, and we’ve spent as much as 15-20 minutes at a time rolling/throwing the ball to each other. You love playing peek-a-boo and showing us ‘so big.’ You pull yourself up on everything, but you haven’t really ‘cruised’ yet. You love standing against the glass door and looking outside. You created a new game where you reach toward me when your daddy is holding you, and as soon as he hands you to me, you start reaching back for him—and we keep going back and forth. You love splashing in the bath. You love pushing cars, big and small, on the floor and making engine sounds. Most of all, you love watching your brother, especially when he pays attention to you and plays with you.

You wave ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ most of the time. You use baby signs for ‘more’ and ‘all done,’ and I haven’t done a great job of introducing other signs to you. You still bounce to the music and clap your hands when you are happy. You started giving me big-mouth kisses after you finish nursing—quite possibly the best reward of this whole nursing experience for me.

Your eating habits have been interesting, to say the least. You are a great eater, it’s just that you like to trick us by switching your preferences constantly. About two months ago, you went through a stage where you were not at all interested in formula until we accidentally figured out that you wanted your bottles warmed up instead of room temperature—and then you started taking them again happily. Now you are back to being just fine with room temperature. Right around the time you turned 10 months, you decided that you were so over baby foods and refused to eat anything given to you with spoon. So we started giving you all finger foods, until about a week ago, you lost your interest in most of those and went back to being happy spoon-fed. So now we are doing a combination of the two, which, I guess, is quite normal for this age—but I just wish you wouldn’t change your mind so frequently. Next time, I expect a memo—a seven-day notice will suffice.

Cole, you continue to delight us daily. When I was telling Daddy about what a wonderful little boy you are, he said, “How did we ever live without him?”

Love you, my sweet,
Your mama