9 months
(P.S. I added a pic of me to the LOtR post. In case you weren’t going to read this long rambly post!)
My fun-loving boy,
This is you on your nine month birthday, hanging out on the porch with your dad as you do many mornings. This particular day there was a lot of wind, and the crab apple blossoms were coming down off the trees like a magenta and pink snow, rolling down the street.
Nine months old - a whole 2/3 of a year. It sounds old, somehow. When you were newborn 9 months seemed impossibly big, active, mobile, old. And here we are already. And there you go.
Because now you are mobile. You have given up on most of your toys. Oh, you’ll play with them for a few minutes here and there, especially if someone helps you make noise with them or hides the little things under the big things or stacks things up so you can knock them over. But now the entire world is your toy. You zoom, commando style, left arm right leg, right arm left leg, across the room to grab onto/bite/pat whatever is in the room that looks least like a toy. If it’s a shoe, a purse, a shopping bag - great. If it’s a phone cord, a power supply, or a piece of wrapping paper small-enough-to-choke so much the better!
You also like to pull up on things. They have to be particular things - flat, of a certain height, preferably with sharp edges and mugs of milk on top of them - but you have worked out that you can grab one, get one foot under you, then the other, and push! You bounce on your legs as much as you can. You’ll go on standing or bouncing for hours until you are pale and dark-circled under the eyes, and grateful for a book or some arms - anything that lets you stop working on those first steps. Unless, of course, you aren’t finished and then you cry. Being placed on your bum to sit is an insult. Being placed on your tummy to crawl is a disgrace. Nothing will do for you but to stand tall and proud.
Until you spy something really interesting in that corner over there. Then you’ll condescend to crawl over there. But let it be your decision! You’re still young enough that eventually you crawl back. I can tell how scary whatever you’ve chosen to explore was by the lap scale - if you come back and touch my leg and take off again, it wasn’t scary at all. If you crawl up for a kiss it was pretty scary. And if it was really scary or seemed particularly far away you burrow under my shirt for just a teensy nip of milk before leaning against me for a few breaths, or maybe even a short play or read a book.
It is amazing to be your security. You look to me to be calm and present and there. And most of the time it feels like exactly what I am meant to do. I have become calmer and present and more here, and I like it. I am beginning to see why the reverse process in your teens will be so painful.
Although your independence surprises me already. Oh you’re still a baby and at night or in the morning you cuddle and burble and croon. But in between, my boo, you are so determined to do what you want. That will of yours is astonishing. You’ve unplugged the phone about a million times already, and we’re thinking of moving the little box entirely. Either that or duct tape the cord on.
We’ve also officially entered the Cheerio years, and you pick them up - pass them from pincer grip to pincer grip - munch them, swallow them whole, throw them, and generally consider Cheerios to be your best toy after your dad and I and the cats. I have found them in the heating vents and mushed into my sock; under the piano and behind the couch. Since we only give them to you in the kitchen I’m not quite sure how that works, but I do know it’s you leaving your trail. Marking your turf. Right now I find it hard to believe I’ll ever find the Cheerios anything but cute.
I can’t imagine what mums did before Cheerios. Okay, we actually use Toasted Os ’cause they don’t have wheat in them, but we call them Cheerios - and I still don’t know what mums did before General Mills came up with the idea.
Speaking of turf, you know who you belong to. You have just started getting wary of strangers. You gave the doctor a particularly hard time today while she was holding you to weigh me. You cried when my aunt held you on Sunday. You still smile at strangers if they keep their distance, but it is a thinner, uncertain smile. If they start to lunge in close it disappears awfully fast and you whip around to look for me, or your dad.
But some creatures are exempt. Yesterday we went to the zoo, despite drizzly cool weather. The little kids’ zoo was open and you squawked at the stork, pressed up against the cage for the singing dogs, and couldn’t have cared less about the turkeys. We also got a really amazing spot for the polar bear feeding and you just cracked up! Huge white fluffy things lumbering around! I worry about your survival skills, my boy, laughing at all the predators, but I guess that’s why you’re so darn cute. I’d throw myself between you and a polar bear any day.
And that laugh. You have the most amazing sense of humour. You make jokes now, hiding your face and laughing. The latest one is that you beep my nose and when I say ‘beep’ you crack up. I guess your dad and I taught you that but it’s quite something that you will beep my nose rather than just waiting for your own to be beeped. I suppose we should have worked on waving instead, since that is actually our culture’s greeting. But hey, no one’s freaked out that you want to beep their nose yet.
You are learning some baby signs - not the official ones, all the time, since we’ve been less than consistent. But you bang your hand on a flat surface for “come here” and you lift your arms up to be picked up and you grab my shirt and pull it up while thrusting against me for “milk” - something that doesn’t always go over well at Greek restaurants, by the way. Nor, I tell you for reference in your teens and twenties, in bars and clubs. But I couldn’t care less because every single act of communication is just this incredible thing - a little window into what you’re thinking.
Just before I took this picture, you were wriggling and laughing, then looking back at me like in the shot, and then laughing again. You were telling me and your dad about the wind. And the truth is, Noah Benjamin, if you hadn’t woken us up that early and wriggled about until we took you outside we would never have noticed it.
It is a joy to listen to you.
Comments
3 Responses to “9 months”
Leave a Reply
Happy 9th birthday!
Here, in the US, there are safty caps to screw onto the wall plug to keep the wee ones from pulling wires. Then putting something heavy in front to dissade the curious. : )
This is such a wonderful time, when everything they do can be seen, their mind working over time!
Though an arduous time for parent, to not give in to child’s every whim, because we so want to give them everything.
Your Noah is just a gorgeous, gorgeous child. My little guy is coming up on the 9 month mark, and I cannot believe how time flies. So much of your post could have been written about him, and isn’t it amazing how kids can be simultaneously completely the same and completely different?
I have to go buy some Cheerios now. ;-)
Oh he’s a doll! - Jens