Dear Radley - Month Nine

Dearest Radley,

My love, my heart, my sweet. A couple of days ago you turned 9 months old. 3/4 of a year!!! I can hardly believe it! It does not seem at all possible that you have now been here as long as I was pregnant. I must confess that the pregnancy felt so so much longer than the time you have been here with us which seems to be flying by faster than I can even comprehend. Every morning when you wake up I notice that you are bigger than the night before. I simply cannot believe how fast this time has gone by. 9 months. wow.

First, I would like to report that finally after months of faking me out you have teeth!

After what has to be gallons upon gallons of drool, the bottom two have finally busted through and in short order, you put them to work scraping everything from apples to zuchinni. It did not take you long to figure out how to use these cute little teeth very efficiently and get actual chunks of food, which has opened up a whole new world of eating to you.

Words cannot do justice as to how much you love to eat. You love mealtime so much that in the past few weeks (before these teeth finally showed up) you were starting to be frustrated by the completely ridiculous 2 second wait between when the spoon would leave your mouth and when I could refill it and put it back in. You also felt you should control the spoon at all times. Never mind that you dont know how to use it. At all. But as we have practiced a bit more you have come to accept that I can get your food into your mouth more accurately than you can and you only take occasional swipes at the spoon.

So far, your favorite foods appear to be Butternut Squash and Oatmeal with Bananas. You are incredibly sensitive to anything with the slightest bit of tartness and even the sweetest of applesauce makes you shudder as if you had just bit into a sour lime. Your favorites can best be what is described as, well, bland. I am hoping you broaden your culinary horizons now that you have the tools to work with.

But now that you have teeth, then plan is to ditch the puree (yay) and let you go at real food like I did with your brother. We are going back to having you self feeding table foods and predict that you will get the hang of it pretty much immediately. That should make this next month really fun and really, really messy.

In other news, you have recently divided the folks in your life to 2 categories: "mommy" and "everyone else who is not mommy". This has been interesting on several fronts. You really want nothing to do with the folks in the latter category which is resulting in some challenging moments when I need to do pretty much anything like work, shower or have a salad or something like that.

You really will have none of me not holding you. You cry as if you have been personally offended when I need to give my burning arm a break and have you ride in the stroller for a little bit while my arm recovers. I hope I am getting some good arm muscles out of this deal, because you get really heavy after about 10-15 minutes. At first I felt horrible for you and you have such a pathetic cry and pouty face when you start getting so clingy.

But soon, I got over it and pretty much figure this is the first step for both of us learning to let go.

But all in all, you are still so very happy all the time.

You like it when I sing to you. You like to think you can jump. You love to play catch even if you sometimes throw behind rather than in front of you. You seem to be working hard on standing unassisted. You love to splash water. You love to babble and squeal. You love your brother. I watch you as you watch Mack and I can see your mind working about how to get fast enough to catch up to him. I see you light up whenever he comes around and plays with you. The other day you were wearing your "Big Truck pajamas" as Mack calls them and he spent a solid 20 minutes poking the big trucks on you and saying "Big Truck" and you were cracking up and thought he was so very funny.

There are bets out there if will be walking before a year or not. I cautiously say yes...but your brother proved me wrong once already, so I am a little hesitant to call it at all and truth be told, I don't much care. All in good time.

You see Radley, with Maverick I was so anxious about all the milestones: sitting, crawling, standing, walking...any of them. I worried and read everything about the milestones. I tired to predict. I wished they would come. I compared him to others the same age. With you, I don't care. With you I don't think I have cracked that silly What to Expect book once. With you, I am content simply with you being you. In whatever stage. Doing whatever you do. You will walk, you will stand...when you are ready. Right now, I wish you would just slow down a bit so I could have a bit longer with you in your baby-hood.

Overall this month with you has been really great. You are really starting to develop your own likes and quirks.

You are so sweet and endearing and although many days I see things that you do that remind me of your brother and I am amazed at how much alike you both are even while you are so clearly becoming your own little individual. Your own little you. And there is not any other you I would rather have.

I love you so so much,

Mommy