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To my future opera diva, or my danSing queen, or my rough and tumble little munchkin, or my black-and-blue baby, or my champion of all things NO!,

There are far too many ways to address you these days that it is difficult to even begin this letter. I’ve started and stopped a number of times – and here we are, four days past your 10-month birthday, and still no stereotypical, sappy mommy-blog letter to mark the occasion.

So here is my feeble attempt to encapsulate the most chaotic, and overwhelming month of your life to date. You, little one, are a champ. Despite sleep schedules thrown by new time zones, long plane flights, even longer car rides, sleeping on the floor of various unfamiliar and strange homes surrounded by boxes and forced to slumber next to your Daddy who snores and your Mommy who thrashes, you took it all in stride.

One of my favorite memories of this month, in fact, was seeing you, a silhouette in a darkened room, blissfully playing with a pile of toys at three o’clock in the morning. See, Mommy and Daddy never bought you a travel crib because anytime we’ve travelled in the past, we’ve been visiting folks who could provide us with such a furnishing. Now flash to the week where your crib was on a truck in the middle of the country and your parents were living like nomads in various homes thanks to some very generous family members, and you, my darling, were sans sleeping vessel in which to keep you from having access to an entire room of tempting treats (read: electrical wires, outlets, mirrors and other objects of the fragile variety). To manage this situation we just created a nest on the floor of the various rooms in which we stayed in the hopes that you would, I dunno, stay put. A totally logical concept given your obsession with half crawling/half bear walking and essentially being mobile whenever possible. Each night as we lived like gypsies, we rocked you until you were literally out cold – and then lay you in a pile of blankets in the hopes that you would then remain in that position for the next 12 hours. We slept right next to you, of course, to monitor the situation – and each evening, around 3am you would awake, and before I’d hear you moving, you’d make your way over to the pile of toys and diaper bags and suitcases strewn about the room and begin happily tossing objects so that a rain of toys would rouse me from my slumber. It was precious. And impossible. And thank god your princess crib is back in our lives.

Which leads me to the fact that since that week of sleeping chaos/disruption/poordecisionmakingonyourparentspart you have been our marathon sleeper. 8pm, after bath time, we rock in the rocking chair while you drink a final bottle, and then you happily snuggle up in your crib with your cow blankie and coo your way to sleep. Honestly, that blanket is your BFF 4 eva – I’m already having visions of trying to pry a tattered and worn version of that dear blankie from your 18 year old hands as you head off to college and you’ll be screaming, OVER MY DEAD BODY! Yeah, so I’ve created a monster encouraging this blankie love affair. But there is nothing cuter than seeing you quake with joy upon spotting your blankie – reaching out and clutching that fleecy, silky wonder to your chest and literally curling up your legs and balling up your person to embrace that square with as much of your baby body as humanly possible. You L-O-V-E-S your blankie. Perhaps it is thanks to this obsession that when you awake in the middle of the night, you readily sooth yourself back to sleep and then you awake a bubbly, smiley, babbling bundle at 8:30am.

I am envious of this morning personality as I am of the opposite inclination. I grumble and snarl and suckle my coffee – but then your sing-songy, sweet little voice streams out of the nursery and somehow infiltrates my bear-like loathing of the wee hours (and yes, 8am is totally the WEE HOURS) and you send me off to work with a bounce, A MOTHER FUCKING BOUNCE, in my step.

You are magic. There is no other explanation for my sudden enjoyment of any hour prior to noon.

You also are mobile in a capacity that your father and I can barely comprehend. You are everywhere and into everything and I feel like I need to grow another head and about eighteen extra hands to manage what’s happening in our household. It’s like the Tazmania Devil has taken refuge in our home. It has made unpacking a house filled with ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE (yeah, I know I’ve mentioned this shit before, but seriously?!?!) boxes near impossible. And your grandparents, while leaving the house yesterday after a full weekend of babysitting said, Please, don’t have twins. We can barely keep up with one. Whatever you do, just don’t have twins. Yeah, okay Mom and Mr. MOLECULAR GENETICIST father, I’ll get right on negotiating that arrangement with my ovaries.

YOU HEAR ME UTERUS? NO TWINSIES!

So yeah, what I’m saying is that you are pretty damn able. You pet Ursa and play tug-of-war with her ratty toys. You pull up on anything and everything. The pointier the corner of the table or the more unstable the surface, the more excited you are to pull up – thus the bruises and the fact that you look like you’ve been engaged in a match with Mike Tyson. Probably one of the more pathetic aspects of this pull-up is that you have NO IDEA how to sit down after standing, and your baby legs get tired real fast, so you begin to shake and you look at us with the most pitiful face of confusion and misery like, WTF Me? How do I get down?! HELP ME GET DOWN! (as your bum hovers barely six inches off the ground). I’ll admit, sometimes I let the standing get to the point of desperation just to witness that absolutely adorable pout that accompanies the panic. I have faith that you’ll figure it out – as just today you began squatting and shaking like an athlete pushed to the brink in an attempt to sit back down. It reminded me of wall sits, and the agony of such a workout, and I understood why panicking was the preferred response. But no pain, no gain, er something.

Here, enjoy this bowl of ice cream.

Speaking of eating, while sitting in your highchair you bounce and shake and twirl your wrists in a circle like a gymnast warming up for a floor routine. Eating, it is a serious workout. Now that we’re feeding you adult table food you are FAR more enthusiastic and adventuresome. Of course, you still shake your head violently and purse your lips when you are SICK AND TIRED of whatever lame or boring nutrient we’ve put in front of you, but lasagna, and tacos, and even a veggie orzo salad have become quite popular. You smack your lips and chew that grown up food like you’ve been eating for near a decade. Just one more thing Mommy and Daddy can be proud of.

Our kid shakes her head NO and chews food! Watch out, Newton! Best not put this baby next to an apple tree!

Your mastery of the raspberry is, I think, proof enough of your brilliant mind. If anyone sticks his/her tongue out in your general direction, s/he will be met with a spray of saliva-filled genius. Kind of like your sixth-sense of wintry, snow suits and their accompanying sleeves of death. You can tell when we are about to swaddle you in fleece before we’ve even removed the item from your closet. Perhaps it’s your (brilliant) reading of the temperature in the house and thus the weather for the day, but you know when those snow suits are coming out to make your life miserable. Because we obviously enjoy torturing you – which is what any native Californian would say about the demand to brave “wintry mixes.” I can’t say that you are enjoying this new layering requirement.

And in recent news, you’ve sprouted two brand new teeth – adding to your already impressive spread of choppers. Choppers that you tested out on Daddy, I might add, when you were frustrated and did NOT want to be put in your sleep sack, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. We don’t quite know how to handle this new weapon, but it hasn’t happened since so we are just living in denial, because obviously you’ve now got that impulse out of your system and it will NEVER happen again.

Obviously.

And so my little monster, your parents have started an orthodontic fund in preparation for what’s coming down the pipe. But I must say, you are the most precious, scraggly-toothed monster on the planet – and Mommy and Daddy can’t get enough of that ridiculous grin. Happy 10 Months and welcome to life as a New Englander!

143 Mama