Irregular Newsletter: 11 Months

Dear Mr. Still-Quite-Big:

Well, this 'irregular' newsletter has become verifiably, well, regular!

See these issues: 10 Months, 9 months, 8 months, and 6 months.

You took your first solo steps this month!

Because what is past is prologue, I expect that you will engage this new ability with the drive and intensity that you have in the past when attempting to master a new skill. Since that day (October 26th), you have walked more and more consecutive steps alone, and have become less willing to crawl. Sometimes at night before bed, when you're punch-drunk and silly, you walk between BioMom and I. Us: on the carpet, arms wide open, faces encouraging. You: back and forth, back and forth. As we receive, congratulate, and turn you around to send you off on the return voyage, you barely steady yourself prior to departure, so excited to show off your new skills. Leaning this way and that, wracking our nerves with your tipsy balance, you look like a juggler balancing a stack of plates above your head, bending and turning as you unicycle your way across the stage.

There are still no signs of verbal communications from your little lighthouse. Not a chubby finger pointing earnestly toward a too-high snack on a counter. Or even an accidental hand motion resembling a 'bye-bye' wave as you steady yourself at the window as BioMom carts the SYO off to school.

Of course, that does not inhibit our mutual understandings. You'd have to admit that it is, so far, a one way street, this learning of each other's languages. While you utterly refuse our language, we have had to compensate by deciphering your noises. I believe that I can tell by your tone in that dark time of the night whether you're a) hungry, b) stuffy in the nose, c) sitting in a diaper full of %*&$, d) aching from the persistence of a new tooth attempting to break through your gums or e) completely faking it.

I feel like passing an amendment to our family's constitution similar to the hideously racist and short-sighted Iowa law making English the state's "official language."

Learn the language, fella!

This is not to say that you don't have a sound track. In the mornings, when you wake up, I hear you emphatically practicing various vowels (OOOOO, AAAAAAH) and consonants (sssssT and Tuh Tuh!), followed by what I imagine is are very wet PTTHHHTHTs!

You are developing a great sense of humor and are becoming more socialized with other kids. Last week at a class we attend -- "babygarten" -- you literally crawled over to two similarly-aged twin boys, and went after their nookies, one at a time, grabbing and crawling your way to their property, promptly removing them from their surprised mouths, and stuffing one quickly into your own while attempting a quick-crawling getaway.

You've got this incredibly infectious smile that shows all six of your teeth and all of our neighborhood moms seem to find you handsome.

In one short month you'll be one year old.

It will have been the longest and the shortest year of my life.