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

I want to remember...

Dear Cole:
I started to write this note on August 7. A month later, I still haven't had a chance to finish it. So forgive me for posting it as is. These memories are a work in progress; every month (day?) brings so many things that I don't want to forget, so I see these "I want to remember..." posts as ongoing installments.

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Dear Cole:
I think I need to let go of the idea that I can write some well thought-out letters here and instead simply start writing. You are nine months old now, and the time seems to be flying by—and with it, it carries away the memories that I so desperately want to hold on to.

I forgot just how busy the first year is—with its seemingly never-ending washing of bottles, feeding, sterilizing, laundry, packing lunches, making dinners, straightening up the house, minimizing the amount of crap on the carpet that you will most definitely put in your mouth, and so on. You are easy, so amazingly easy, so I am not complaining. Plus, I know that it will get easier as many of these tasks will fade away or become less urgent as time passes. It’s just that I wish the time wasn’t going quite so fast. I wish for more time to pause and savor the moment. Savor the time with you, your brother, our family.

So forgive me for the lack of eloquence and poorly constructed sentences. The fleeting nature of time is forcing me to choose between not writing at all and writing poorly—and I chose the latter. I choose to keep the memories, however ineloquent they may be.

I want to remember how you love to press your face against something when you sleep. In the bassinet, you always pressed your face against the side of it. You press your face against my breast when you fall asleep nursing. Because of this, you had a tough time transitioning to the crib without bumpers—there was nothing for you to press your face against, only the cold slats of the crib walls. Now that you can roll over, you sleep on your tummy, with your knees bent under your body and your face pressed against the mattress. This sleeping position worries us, but if we attempt to roll you onto your side, you immediately roll back onto your tummy, face flat against the mattress.

I want to remember how much you love to eat. You get so excited when you know you will get to nurse that your mouth comes wide open and your body wiggles in anticipation. I used to call you ‘my little piranha’ because you would latch on with such speed and intensity, regardless of whether I was ready. At one point, you even tried to latch on through my t-shirt. You share the same excitement for solid foods. You used to say ‘mmmmmm’ after every bite. When you watch us eat, you look at us so intently and smack your lips and tongue as if trying to taste it.

I want to remember how much you adore your brother. No one can make you laugh like Jon can, no one makes your eyes light up like he does. You always want to know what Jon is doing, your head spinning immediately when you hear his voice.

I want remember how you like to kick your legs when you sit. You sit with both of your legs bent, making a diamond shape—and you kick your legs by straightening them legs out, one in, one out, as fast as you can. You do that when you are excited or when you are frustrated. I wonder how you don’t get carpet burns on the outside of your feet from moving them so fast.

I want to remember how you ‘dance’ to the music. You sit on your bottom, and bounce your body up and down, as if there is a little spring in your diaper. It is adorable.

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That's where I left off a month ago. There is much more to come, I promise.
Love you, my sweet.
Your mama