ten months

photo credit: sedonya

Dear Joshua,

Yesterday was your ten month birthday. I was at a consignment sale on Saturday and it made me so sad to look at the little baby clothes you used to wear and think about how you’ll never be that little again. But I also look forward to all the things that we’ll get to do together as you get older. I am eager to go hiking with you and ride bikes along the greenway together. I can’t wait to see you run around the yard with the dog and climb trees with your sister.  I'm thoroughly enjoying the ten month old you are now and I'm so excited to see the boy you'll grow to be.  So while it's a little sad to see the baby days go by so fast, it's also fun to imagine the future with you in our family.

You are all out walking now. I mean, like the length of our kitchen walking. You do this hilarious zombie walk where you hold your arms out in front of you to help you balance.  Sometimes you also twist your tongue sideways and stick it out the bottom of your mouth, rubbing it along your bottom teeth while you walk.  I suppose walking takes a lot of concentration.

 

And you adore your sister, oh how you adore her.  Of course you do.  We all knew you would.  It's fun to watch her light up your face by just paying you one little minute of attention.  She can make you giggle like no other.

At the same time, you have developed a very strong attachment to me this month.  I have a love/hate relationship with the fact that you’re a total mama’s boy. You reach for me but not really for anyone else. You climb my legs to get me to pick you up and I have to peel you off of me to get you to go to the church nursery now. Fortunately you don’t cry, it just takes a little more effort than normal to hand you over to someone else since you cling to me so tightly.

Desperate for more sleep and tired of being bitten, I decided to start weaning you this month. You have taken a bottle of formula before bed pretty easily ever since you turned eight months old.  I decided to start weaning you just before you turned nine months old and after about two weeks you were already down to only nursing two times per day.  I was kind of thinking I would try to keep it that way for a while but somehow that twice a day quickly turned in to you only nursing first thing in the morning and my supply dwindled.  I could tell you were no longer getting very much milk so just this week you finally gave up and just refused to nurse one morning. It was fine with me.  It’s much easier this way and you do sleep a little better at night (usually 8:45ish - 6:15ish). You also still bite me but fortunately it’s no longer while you’re breastfeeding.

You have six teeth and have been trying to cut two more bottom teeth the past couple of weeks. The drool has come back full force and you’ve been slightly warmer than usual.  You're still a much pickier eater than your sister ever was.  You like almost every fruit and hate almost every vegetable.  You love all kinds of bread and dairy products.

At your nine month check-up you weighed 22 lbs 2 oz and I’m sure you’re over 23 lbs now. You’re still wearing mostly 18 and 24 months clothes and size 4 diapers.

It’s quite different for me to have such an active baby. It’s not that your sister wasn’t active; it’s just that you are constantly on the move whereas she would only go when she wanted to. She would sit and look and listen as I read her a story but you will have nothing of that. You won’t sit to take a bath and you must be standing and going at all times now. There’s never a minute of stillness. You climb the stairs, climb in the fireplace, open all sorts of kitchen cabinets that we somehow managed to train Jules to stay out of without baby locks. You throw yourself out of shopping carts and strollers (literally you threw yourself out of the stroller onto a very hard floor one day when I neglected to buckle you in). You climb out of the car seat the second I place you in it and if I don’t get the tray on the high chair within two second of getting you in it then you’re climbing out of that at lightning speed. It makes me dread the day that we decide to take down the crib and put you in a real bed.  Maybe by then I’ll be up for a crazy big challenge…?

One thing I know for sure is that no matter how challenging life has become since you were born, it's all totally been worth it.  You are my precious, precious baby and you always will be.


I love you, Buddy.

Love,
Mama