10 Months

Dear Jack B'Hat,

You are 10 months old today!! Double Digits! Hooray! As PawPaw says, you are hardly even a baby anymore. For some reason, nostalgia makes me believe that I miss you as a snugly sweet infant, but if I remember hard enough, I recall how hard all of that was. I think you are so much fun right now! Even though you are into EVERYTHING and I can't keep you out of ANYTHING, it is so cool to see you play and explore and learn!

Here are some things about you this month:

1. You are about to walk, and if someone said, "You can't play with your toys unless you walk across the living room," I think you could do it. For now, because your Momma and Dada still cater to your every need, you'd rather be carried. I can't blame you. I think we all spend the rest of our lives hoping to be carried again. You cruise around the living room and sometimes forget that you even need to hang on to something. After you realize you've let go of the furniture you're using to stand, you cautiously turn around and lower yourself to the floor. "Whew," I imagine you're thinking, "they almost saw me walk."

2. You aren't particularly interested in TV (despite my pleading), but when Little Bill comes on, you perk up and crawl as fast as you can to the TV and stand up and pat at the image of Bill Cosby as he hands his hat to Little Bill. You love that jazzy intro (which makes your Momma proud) and it keeps you occupied for a minute or two. I like Little Bill more than you do, but I'm hoping you'll grow into the show soon.

3. You are very interested in unpacking. It doesn't matter what it is: diapers out of the box, toys out of your toy basket, clean, freshly folded laundry that you'd like to throw across the room, everything stacked neatly on your Dada's nightstand that you would rather see in a disheveled circle around you, etc. I wish you liked to put things away just as much, but I'm pretty sure that it takes some OCD to be the person who is excited about putting things back in place. It turns out Moms across the country have been fighting this battle for centuries and you are exceedingly normal in this respect.

4. You got a new car seat. You did not like it at first. Now I do not. It turns out that to put you in I basically have to maneuver through what seems like a maze of lasers without tripping an alarm (like Katherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment, only no cat suit and significantly smaller boobs). It's hard to get you in. But you like it once you are strapped down.

5. You want to eat what we're eating, and I'm becoming a little bit more brave about letting you try things. I have to admit that I take a little bit of joy from watching your face as you put things in your mouth for the first time - it's usually a confused, "What the hell is this" expression followed by a sound you make, like you're sucking air through a straw. It's the equivalent of saying, "I don't know about this.." BUT you've only spit out two things, both of which I did not give to you - a lemon (that you confiscated off of the counter when I was drying you off after a bath) and some bark from the firewood.

6. You like to "fix" things. By fix, I mean you take two objects and tap them together, like you are tinkering with a project in the garage. It's all very serious as seen in your expression. No one should laugh or make light of it, I found out.

7. As far as your health is concerned, you've done OK this month overall, but you have a never ending cold! I suppose this is normal for little ones, especially teethers, but there is a lot of wiping and sniffing and smearing of snot. Ick.

As always, I am so, so glad to be your Momma. Everyone says what a happy, good baby you are. Soon they will have to say that you are a happy, good boy! I love you, Hut da Dut!!

Momma