11 Months

Goose, 

I'm late on your monthly letter.  I know.  I'm sorry.  It's the first time but I am sure not the last. You can hold it against me when your older.  You will probably hold a lot of things against me but I will worry about that later.  For now, you are the image of perfection and love, wonderment and joy.

You have learned quite a few new tricks this month, several of them not so fabulous.  I'll start out with the most adorable.  You have learned, via your Auntie B, to give kisses.  She literally suffocates you with kisses when she is home that I think you just picked up on it.  When asked for a kiss you open your mouth and lean into my face.  You are still working on it but it is very very cute.  Sometimes you even get going with this smacking sound.  You have learned the word "down" which comes out more as "doun" or "dom". You especially love saying this when I am trying to put you in for a nap.  You start wiggling around on my lap repeating "down, doun, doun, dom..."  Yes, my darling, I know you want down but Momma needs to eat so lets focus on the napping right now.  You might not say it quite right but you definitely know what it means.

On the not so cute front, you are the fastest baby on the planet.  The other day we were sitting on the floor playing with your toys still surrounding the Christmas tree.  Grandpa was carrying a TV outside so I got up to open the door for him.  Literally, I walked to the door, held it open, then turned around and came back inside.  You had stood up, walked to the tree, reached your little hand as high as you could reach, pulled down this fish Christmas ornament, and proceeded to eat it.  Yes, thats right.  When I sat back down next to you, your lips were smacking and there were little pieces of fish ornament on the floor.  PANIC!!!!  I pried your mouth open to find nothing but clearly there were pieces on the floor.  Gammy and Grandpa didn't think that there was much to worry about while I was having a coronary.  I called Dr. Greg immediately and explained that you might or might not have eaten a tiny piece of Christmas ornament.  He thinks I am crazy.  He said to call back if I had any concrete evidence.  After poop watching for about a week, lets just say nothing came out.

You are quite the good walker now. You are careful around the saddles in the carpet and if you have your non-slip socks on you are ok to go in the kitchen.  You rarely fall and if you start you usually land on your butt or catch yourself.  However, you have started this running thing. You can run while holding my hand but you have been testing your independent running skills recently and I think I have about 50 new gray hairs because of it.  We have this new train table (Thanks Mary!!  I LOVE it and Wyatt likes it too).  It is perfectly your height and although you are not that into building train tracks right now, you love to roll balls around on it.  Anyway, the other day you started running, couldn't stop, and I couldn't catch up to you before you ran right into the table, resulting in a fabulous bruise on your cheek.  You barely cried but I feel awful and am back to holding your hand all the time regardless of the running.  Yes, I know you want to be independent but I am not going to sit back and watch you hurt yourself.  Besides I like holding your hand.  You might not be my little baby for very much longer.

I wave at all the nursery school children that I see when I am work.  All I can think about is you might be going there by next year.  It is amazing to me that you will learn and grow so much in a year.  For me, as an adult, years go by and sometimes nothing changes.  I learn nothing new.  Years string into years, overlapping, so you can't pick out the end of one and the beginning of another.  For you, everything is new, intriguing, something to figure out and discover.  You are growing everyday, learning everyday, and making every single moment count.  Maybe if we all lived a little bit more like you we would appreciate our lives and world in a whole new way.  I guess you are teaching me a thing or two.

I love you everyday.

Mom