Dear Son,

You are ten months old – 44 weeks today. We brought you home 44 weeks ago tomorrow. I cannot believe how fast this time has gone by. Every day you do something new and exciting and amazing. You are the light of my life and I love you beyond words.

At ten months your personality is really starting to shine through. I think you have noticed from me and your father that sarcasm and humor are two of our primary methods of communicating. You love to make us smile and laugh, and you already know when you are doing things you shouldn’t. Today you tried to climb up onto your activity table, looking right at me over your shoulder and grinning the whole time.

Friday night, while you hade five friends over to play, you decided it would be fun to swim in the pets’ water dish. You were so quiet about it, and SO FAST, that by the time I realized you were out of the kitchen you were soaking wet and grinning like nobody’s business. I couldn’t believe you’d picked up the entire dish and dumped it over yourself! But then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised…you are very strong and the pet dishes are some of your favorite things to play with.

You are an eating machine. You are eating three meals and two snacks every day, plus you still have a bottle in the wee early hours of the morning. For breakfast you like yogurt and cheerios. For lunch you have fruits or veggies, crackers, turkey, cheese or pasta. For dinner you like to eat whatever we are eating, but you really enjoy chicken and rice. You also loved grandpa’s steak the other night, and chicken and noodles are high on your “favorites” list. Typically your snacks right now are bottles, but once in a while you want a real snack, like 1/4 of a pear or apple or some crackers or puffs. I cannot get over how much you can eat in one sitting; I’m pretty sure you’re hollow!

You are crawling at top speeds these days, and if something is stationary enough for you to pull youself up with, you are standing. You love to walk around the room grabbing furniture as you go. Tonight daddy & I got you to take one small step, but in general, you prefer to crawl unless you are holding on to something. As much as I am excited to see you walk, I’m afraid you’re going to skip walking and go from crawling to running. Plus I’d like to hold on to my baby a little bit longer. I think you totally qualify as a toddler right now, and that is bittersweet for me.

You don’t have a lovey yet, which grammy says isn’t a good thing. You have a whole bunch of stuffed animals, but there isn’t one you have latched onto yet. But just in the past few days you’ve begun to “love on” things. You lay your head on something and pet it while I go, “awww….do you love (the couch, the dog, the blanket, mama, the table, etc)?”. I love seeing this loving part of your personality come out.

Yesterday you learned how to make the “guh” sound. So all day yesterday and today you have been making sounds that start with the letter “G.” It is so funny to me; it seems you are learning one consonant at a time, so your sounds come in groups. For days it was “mamamamamamama” and then it was “dadadadadadadada” and then “tatatatatatata”. Now it’s “gagagagagagagagagagaga”. Very amusing.

You play hide and seek like a champ. You love to be near a large object and you will “hide” by putting your face right up next to that object where I can’t see you. Then you either turn your head or lean over until I can see you. Your grin from ear to ear and wait for me to say, “Peekaboo!” You can play that game for hours. You can also knock over stacked blocks or cups for hours, and I think if we let you play in the bathtub all day you’d be okay with that.

You are sleeping from 7:30 at night until around 3 or 4am. You wake up and always need a diaper change; we usually give you a bottle at that point and then you sleep again until about 7 am. However, this morning you were raring to go at 6 am. That wasn’t too great; by 8 you were having complete meltdowns over every little thing. Typically you take a really great morning nap (1 1/2 – 2 hours) and a shorter afternoon nap. Today you took a two hour afternoon nap and that was wonderful.

You are a very empathetic little boy, my dear son. When mommy is crying (like she did tonight because it had been a looooooong day and mommy has a lot of stress right now) you get very concerned. You will hug me and try to make me smile, but you examine me very seriously to make sure I’m okay. One thing you will learn, my son, is that we women can be very emotional at times. Today was just one of those days for you mama – it wasn’t you, though, I promise!

I love you so much son. I cannot get over how much I love you and how that love grows and grows every day. It is such a joy to be your mama and I thank God for you every day!

I love you son!

Love,
Mama