Dear Son A,

Congrats:  you are officially 11 months old.  Past two hands.  On your way to a year.  (Only one more month of the jubblies:  woot!).  And man, kid:  you are a hoot.

I’ve always heard parents sharing how they pushed their first kids into things:  into eating solids, into crawling and walking quicker, into going to school sooner, into becoming the president of a country.  But the second kid?  Not so much.  Still wanna eat pureed sweet potatoes and wear your pull ups until you’re ten?  Enh:  it’s your choice.

I don’t think we had that choice with your older brother:  he kinda took off running and drags us along.  I think he might be yelling “Catch up!” if we could hear him, but he’s run so far ahead, and my ears are plugged into listening to Lynn Rossetto Kasper croon about caramelizing pears, so I’m in a bit of a daze.

I just forget.  The other day I realized that at this age your brother was toddling/walking/sliding down stairs.  You:  not so much.  But it doesn’t seem abnormal:  it seems like to see a person your size running around would just be odd.

You’ve started balancing, and it’s hilarious, to you and everyone around you.  Today you crawled up to me while I was sitting on the floor, sucked into my stinkin’ book (literary meth, I tell you:  why must it have come in from the library with only a two week checkout while the hubby is gone for one of those weeks?!!?) waiting to go pick your brother up from school (although if I had known that he’d come home covered in pink marker from having decorated the table with his most quiet compatriot Master Sears, and then proceed to dump his water bottle in his room, and tear his calendar off the wall, and play on the computer without permission, and watch tv without permission, and scatter both UNO and dominoes all over the floor, and throw tantrum after tantrum when told he had to pick them up, and take a tub of clothes in the garage and dump them all over the floor, and take you out into the garage, and strip off all his clothes, and then put a pair of pants and a pair of underwear in front of him saying that he was indeed dressed and try to go outside to pee, all between the time of 11:45 and 2:15, I might have just kept reading my book), you pulled yourself up on me, let go, stood, laughing and clapping.  Which made you fall over.  But then you threw your hands into the air and spun in a circle:  because hey – it’s great to be able to stand.

We have yet to find a carb you don’t like.  Correction:  we have yet to find a fruit and/or grain you don’t like.  Green items are usually met with a firm shake of the head back and forth.  And then turning red.  And then yelling.  But after watching your multimedia show, you submit to the greens.  Most of the time.  With the hopes that a multigrain piece of toast or a little swedish pancake may be lurking at the bottom of the bowl.

And you like toys.  You play with toys.  And finger games.  And peekaboo.  This is such a foreign concept to me.  For years I’ve wondered why I was supposed to know all the verses to the farmer and the dell:  was it just a trick to see how doofy parents will make themselves look?  But you like those songs.  They make you happy.  You have a favorite book of baby faces showing different emotions, and when we show you a certain face (known as “your friend”), you throw your arms up and spin.  Or you giggle.  Or you grab the book and flip it back and forth looking for the ever elusive friend.  Who is showing the emotion:  happy.

You also love to play peekaboo.  Today at the store, which is being torn up because the deli is getting a makeover, which for some reason meant that they had to move all the shelves in the health food section to line up against the deli as well as put other shelves in areas that were relatively empty and a nice breather from the constant barrage of “buy our product!   you know you want to!  be american!  CONSUME!”), you would see people, mostly in hard hats, and you would bury your face in your hands.  And then drop them.  And grin.  Of course, not every one *knew* that you were playing peekaboo and that their proper response was to drop everything and put on a dopey grin and exclaim very excitedly “There’s Little A!”, but if they noticed, they thought you were cute nonetheless.

Now, I have to let you know:  your lease on the jubblies is about to run out.  I think you have an inkling that something’s in the works, because all of a sudden you’ve decided you neeeeeeeed them.  Like your dad has fed you and I come home and pick you up and experience a face plant in my clavicle.  Or you just decide to confirm that there is something inside my shirt.  In a public place.  So everyone else can confirm as well:  I guess Hebrew law does say you need to have at least two witnesses.  Sorry, bub:  all good things must come to an end, as well as things that are really annoying (like experiencing clogged ducts, which I am right now, because see above for how pappy is out of town and brother is on a rampage and I am the Mother Martyr Supreme of All Christendom).

So please.  Keep balancing.  And reminding me that it’s so stinkin cool that you can balance.  And that sometimes that’s all we need to do.

That, and run to Dairy Queen for some sugar free Dilly Bars.  Yes, there’s two in the fridge, but me thinks that’s not going to be enough.

Love, Ma

Little A Adventures, Mama Musings