It has finally happened. The 12th day of the month passed me by, and I FORGOT to sing Happy Birthday to you. I don’t know if it was the travel the weekend before or the fact that I was heading out to the driving range after you went to bed for the first time in a couple of years, but I blew it. It’s particularly distressing because I have keyed many monthly duties in my life such as tossing out my contact lens and performing my monthly self-exam of my breasts around this very date. So, here I am, two days later wearing an old lens and wondering if I have breast cancer – and on top of that trying to figure out how much money I should drop in the therapy jar for your future use. I can just see it now “well…I think my problems all started when my MOTHER forgot that I had turned 13 months old until the 14th of the month, and by the time she realized it I had already gone to bed!”. If it makes you feel any better, I forgot Kellee’s birthday yesterday, which is coincidentally the day your dad and I started dating. The year: 1998.
This month, you have been nothing short of amazing. For starters, you have decided to locomote using two legs on occasion, which the laundry committee most certainly supports. It’s tough getting stains out of knees, and since you haven’t learned the fine art of steering clear of dirt and sand, your pants could take quite a beating. You still crawl most places, but each day you have taken a few more steps. Perhaps even more impressive, tooth number three poked out on Friday, September 8, followed by tooth number four on Saturday.
You have begun to get used to whole milk from a cow, so you are now nursing in the morning and after I get home from work in the late afternoon – but you’ve been known to drink a bottle with only cow’s milk on occasion and your daytime bottles are about 25 percent my milk, 75 percent cow’s milk.
And your personality, Connor – has changed the most. At the beginning of August, we spent a week with Ed’s family at a lake house. Though you were at ease with your cousins and enjoyed chasing Katie around, you weren’t quite sure about the other folks. Your dad and I snuck out to go get sandwiches at the corner store one day – which took about 15 minutes – and while you didn’t cry the whole time, you were none too happy to be left with your grandparents and quite excited for our return. During the vacation, you allowed Grandpa to carry you around one day and on the last day of vacation, you quite enjoyed your Grandma reading to you. (She’s a teacher, so she’s a really great reader.)
Dad and I have been thinking that you’ve been shedding some of your separation / stranger anxiety, but we weren’t quite sure, until we walked into your grandparent’s house last weekend. For the entire weekend, you were truly delighted to see your relatives, often reaching up your arms to be picked up by one of them – an act formerly reserved for your dad and me. It really made for a delightful visit, and made it much easier for us to ditch you when we went to a friend’s wedding (the motivation for the visit).
You proved that you could sleep through the night in a strange place (a feat never before accomplished), though you didn’t do that every night, of course. Baby steps, right?
Katie and you continued to get along quite well. Clearly, Katie has you wrapped around her little finger as she’s already got you pushing her around in the toy stroller. Everyone was impressed with your strength. At one point, your dad noticed there were no babies in the room and went looking only to find both of you at the bottom of the stairs. Daddy returned to the room with one baby under each arm and Grandma got out the gates.
We went apple picking with Aunt Heather, Uncle Rick, Alisa, and Katie on Saturday morning and you proved that one could eat an apple with very few teeth. I suspect the two bottom ones did all the work. Katie seemed above all that making a mess with the apple and carried hers around.
Connor, as rewarding as it is to have you smile when I come in the room and be instantly comforted by my touch, it is exciting to see you venturing into the world a little bit at a time finding new people to love.
On the morning your turned 13 months, you slept until about 6:00 – I fetched you and you nursed and slept until 6:30. At that point, you sat upright in bed and said MOM! That is the first time you have ever had an ending consonant sound.
Love,
MOM!
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