10 months

(Okay, I lied – here it is)

My boy! 10 months old already!

I have to start thinking about a birthday party! But wait, this isn’t about that. This is about you. And my busy guy, you are something else already.  You are the grand explorer who climbs up the side of his playpen or gets to standing against the cupboard doors or a wall – one hand or foot at a time.  You seem fearless, attacking stairs (at playgroup, although we have some too) as if you could get up them just by flinging yourself hard enough.

You continue to discover your preferences and share them with us. Right now you like one page of Moo, Baa, Lalala – the page where the rhinocerouses SNORT and SNUFF.  You’ll turn the pages back to that page and wait for me to SNORT and SNUFF for your amusement easily 20 times a day.  I have not yet gotten to the point where I will consider hiding the book on top of the piano, but I may.

(The piano is the new messy spot in our house because it is one of the few flat surfaces you can’t reach. The centre of the coffee table worked for a while, but you grew – and if that wasn’t enough, you also have figured out to dump a basket on the floor and stand on it to extend your reach. And you don’t even walk yet!)

Your other favourite amusements include: giving me something and waiting to get it back, complicated games of peek-a-boo where we both hide or where you go around corners, and chasing anything with wheels – or even better, racing me to get to whatever it was. And oh yes – animals of any sort, especially the cats. Yesterday I caught you and Keats wrestling on the floor with each other, to my horror – I’d just popped two dishes in the dishwasher; how did you manage to get into it in that time? You loved it. Now you want to tackle him whenever you see him.

You have a gentler side that is coming out too. You adopted the stuffed lamb you were given as a special lovey and dragged him around for a few days, rubbing your face into him whenever possible – until I made the mistake of winding up the music box and his head wobbled, and that scared you.  You hold on when I pick you up sometimes and hug and it is just the greatest feeling, that you want to cuddle. You rub your face against soft blankets and pillows. And sometimes when you’re crawling or cruising around you get tired and just lie down with your head on the rug for a few minutes.

I love both these sides of you – the reckless reaching out and the calm moments of gentle. Although I sort of wish the former resulted in fewer little bumps and scrapes.

You also have begun what hard-core baby books might call manipulative crying and I call wanting attention.  You’ve (correctly) identified the laptop as one of the challengers to your absolute authority over my time, and we are starting what I suppose is a life-long – but certainly the next-two-years-long – dance between us. 

Right now we have a truce: first order of business is having some good high quality playtime together.  Then during the times I’m reading/typing/whatever you emit a particular “uh!” sound from time to time and I look up, beam at you, perhaps roll you a ball or reach over and tickle you, and then you go on with your baby business and I continue to half-draft things or chat while keeping you in my field of vision. 

Should I miss the “uh” though, chaos results.

This is how, oh my eldest son and only living child, I try to inculcate a little independence; the assurance that things are okay even if all the attention isn’t on you all the time, but that when you need attention it will be there to be given. God knows if I have it right, but Dr. Spock is behind us.

I also try to get you out with other kids at least twice a week.  Two weeks ago, when you weren’t sick, you were in a group of boys all just a  bit older than you and all four of you wanted the same toy.  The other three rushed each other to get it, and you did too at first. Then you sat back and watched them play with it, with another toy in your hand for consolation.  And then after they had pinched each other enough that their mothers hauled them off (two of them) or lost interest (the last), you surged in and played in delight.

And yet just when I was worrying whether you were an evil mastermind, one of the babies cried and you did too, with many pointed looks in my direction to Do Something. Empathy starts pretty young, I guess, or at least annoyance with other people’s children.

Our home is frequently visually chaotic, strewn with everything you’ve found – books, toys, pots and pans, and anything else mistakenly left within reach.  It takes you about 20 minutes to empty all the baskets in the living room.  And you know what? It doesn’t bother me half as much as it might. Somehow your enthusiasm outweighs my love of calm space.

But the time I’m enjoying most are our walks together, with you in the Ergo facing me as we learn how pines are prickly and mulberry leaves are tough, as leaves go; how the wind off the lake gets in your eyes and the rain feels on your dangling, bare feet.  It’s cosy to use a carrier and it feels intimate and sometimes, especially in the evening, reverent.

Every age so far is my favourite as we pass through it and that, my boy, is a large gift from you to me.