Nine Months

Dear Katie,

Hello, sweet girl! Today you are nine months old. This morning we sang "Happy Birthday" to you, the way we do pretty much every time you turn one more month old. While we sang, you held onto the CD shelf - against which you had stood up all by yourself! - and rocked back and forth from foot to foot. You really like it when we sing, and you really like to rock back and forth.

Rocking back and forth is one of those things that you do all the time, so much that your dad and I sometimes forget that this is apparently something that not every baby does. We forget until someone else sees you and says, "Wow, she is really rocking!" "Look at her go, she's rocking!" "She's cracking me up with her rocking!" You rock when you're sleepy and when you're a little bit bored. You rock when you recognize something, like me or your dad or the dog or a cat. You rock when you think something is funny, and you rock when you want to get down off of our laps to explore on your own. You rock hardest when you are very excited.

Over the course of your lifetime, you will probably get tired of hearing me say things like this, but there is a part of me that can't believe you're only nine months old, because it seems crazy that you have only been part of my life for that long. I have jeans and sweaters and socks and nail polish and hair care products older than you, for God's sake. You are such a huge important part of my life (much, much more important than jeans or sweaters or socks or nail polish or even hair care products) that it's a little startling to remind myself that I didn't know you nine months ago.

I guess that's not completely true, since I knew a little bit of your personality while I was pregnant with you, or at least I thought I did. I was pregnant with you for forty weeks, give or take a few days. Next Sunday it will be forty weeks since you have been born. It seems significant, that you are now reaching the point where you will have spent more time out here in the world than you spent in there in the womb. I have to say, I like you much better out here than in there. And I firmly believe that you like it better out here, too.

The last time I wrote one of these letters to you, you were only six months old. You have grown so much since then! Back then you had just learned how to sit up from a prone position and couldn't even crawl. Now you can sit up and crawl and stand up and "cruise" along the furniture while barely holding on with one hand. Sometimes you even stop holding on with any hands. You stand there with both hands up in the air, wobbling, and then you either grab back on with one hand, or you get so excited you start to rock, which causes you to fall over. A week or two ago you discovered our shelves full of CD's, and oh boy howdy do you love to pull the CD's off of the shelf and wave them around in the air and drop them on the floor (in an effort to avert frustration, we have temporarily given up the idea that our CD's should be in some sort of order). You say "dog" and "cat" (well, you say them close enough, and you definitely say them loudly enough). You have four teeth, two on top and two on the bottom (for the record, your bottom middle right tooth came in first, then bottom left, then top middle right, then top left). Your hair is all blonde now (back then you still had some dark brown hair, before that fateful day of September 19th, when I cut off the dark brown mohawk-ish growth of hair on your head).

When I come home from work, you are so excited to see me that both of us can hardly stand it. One day a couple of weeks ago I was on my way home from work, and you and your dad were out doing something, and I talked to your dad on the phone, and he said that when you guys were headed home, he would call me and let me know, and maybe you would pick me up and give me a ride home from the el. I left work and got on the el and got off at the stop near our apartment and walked the 15 or 20 minutes from the el stop to our building, and your dad had not called, so I figured you must still be out running your errands. But then what did I see when I got close? Our car! Sitting right there in front! And then I walked in, and there you and your dad were, at the end of the hallway, in the kitchen. You were sitting in your high chair, and your father was sitting in front of you, feeding you fruit. At first you didn't know it was me (I was kind of far away), and you just looked curious. Then I said to your dad, "Why didn't you call?" And he said, "I was supposed to call?" And then I knew he had forgotten, and I was irritated. 

But when I started talking, and as I walked closer, you knew for sure that it was me, and you got very excited. You started rocking back and forth in your chair, and you got a huge smile on your face, and you were going "ahhh! haaaa!!! baaaaa!!! DAH! DAH!" and you were giggling and waving your arms around in the air, and I tried, momentarily, to hold onto my irritation with your dad. I said, "Hi, Katie," and gave you a big smile and then turned to your father and said with gritted teeth, "yes, you said that you would call me," and then I turned back to you, and you were rocking and grinning and reaching for me, and you were so full of joy that I just couldn't do it. I let go of my irritation, because really, what difference did it make? It's not like it was rainy or snowy outside. I wasn't hurt. I didn't even have a headache. I was home now, and you and your dad were home, too, and it was warm and full of yellow light in the kitchen, and you were so happy to see me that you left me with no room for anything but happy, too! Thank you.

You sleep through the night now, almost every night. Last night you went to bed at 7:00 p.m., and although I heard you murmuring very quietly to yourself when I went to the bathroom at 5:30 this morning, you didn't actually wake up until almost 8:00 a.m. I couldn't believe how long you slept! Other than the early morning murmuring, you didn't even make a peep. We got you ready for bed - we gave you a bath and a bottle and then we read you a book and sang you a song - and then we put you in bed, and you rolled over, and we left your room and shut the door, and we didn't hear you make a sound after that. No crying. Amazing!

You make weird noises sometimes. I can't think of any way to describe it other than to say that it sounds kind of like you are a really old asthmatic man who is trying to clear his throat loudly and with great vigor. No one can make the noise as well as you can. We try - oh, yes, we all try! But you are the best. When we do it, we hurt our throats and make ourselves cough. But when you do it, you smile and rock, and your face glows with noise-making triumph. (Your dad's dad - your grandpa, in case you're reading this but haven't yet figured out how your grandpa is related to you - says that your dad used to make those same noises when he was a baby.) You also do a lot of what one of our baby books calls "immature jargoning," where you babble in what sounds like a foreign language. Not one of the Romance languages - we guess maybe it's Croatian, but then again, we don't really know what Croatian sounds like, so it's entirely possible it's more like Swahili (but for some reason I doubt it).

You eat all kinds of things now. So far you like every food you've ever tried except some of the baby foods. You don't like pureed vegetables, and you don't like pureed meat. We sympathize. They don't seem very appetizing to us, either. But if it's not pureed, or if it's pureed fruit, you will eat it. You especially love fruit - we haven't yet found a kind of fruit you don't enjoy, but you especially love banana, on its own or mixed with other things. So far you've eaten: sweet potatoes, pears, bananas (pureed and in little pieces), apples (and applesauce), prunes, peaches, apricots, avocado, plaintain, mushroom, peas, carrots, bread, Ritz crackers, animal crackers, Zwieback crackers, macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, tiny bits of turkey and chicken, stuffing, rice cereal, barley cereal, oatmeal, carrot soup, and (I admit it) a tiny bit of brownie (you tried that two days ago). There are other things you've tried, too, but those are some highlights.

You love water, and you love your sippy cup, but you haven't figured out how to get water out of your the sippy cup yet. You'll gnaw on the chewy part of your sippy cup with great pleasure, and you really like it when we hold a cup of water for you or fill a bottle with water or feed you water through a straw. One of these days, you'll figure out how to suck water out of the sippy cup, and then a whole new water world will open up for you.

Last Friday night our friends Heather and Arek babysat you while your dad and I went to my work holiday party downtown. It was the first time that I missed your bedtime! We were worried that you might cry and keep yourself from going to sleep, but it turned out we didn't have much to worry about. You went to sleep with only a little bit of crying - once you got a little bit more to drink from your bottle, you went back to sleep and didn't wake up until after 10, which was a little while before you went home. I know I shouldn't have been happy that you woke up after 10, because it means that you didn't get the best night's sleep that you could have, but honestly I was a little bit happy to come home and see you awake, because it meant that I got to hold you and rock you and sing you back to sleep.

Today we went to the doctor for your 9 month check up. You weighed 26 pounds and 8 ounces (2 pounds and 11 ounces more than 3 months ago) and you are 30 1/4 inches tall (2 3/4 inches taller than 3 months ago). You are healthy and happy and developing well. Your doctor commented today on your beautiful eyes and your strong legs, and when he left, he told you to "stay happy." (Then he sent in the nurse to give you some shots, so you had to take a short break from being happy to be very angry and sad. Your face got all blotchy like mine does when I cry. We felt very bad for you. Within 10 minutes, though, you were laughing again.)

Remember up there where I said that I can't believe you have only been alive for nine months, because it seems like you have been part of my life forever? Well, the other thing that I will probably say too much, and that you're probably sick of hearing me say, is the flip side of that. The other thing is that it seems like only yesterday that you were born. It seems like you are growing and thriving and blossoming before my very eyes. I look away and look back and you are bigger! And stronger! And more capable!

Almost everybody who sees you talks about how beautiful you are, what beautiful eyes you have, how smart you are, how happy you are, how lucky we are. All of those things are true.

Every day I tell you that I love you. I love you more and more all the time. Every month I think that you are about as wonderful as you could be, and sometimes your dad and I will say, "ok, she can just stay at this age now," but then the next month you are doing more and learning more, and we decide that you are even more wonderful. When do you stop getting more wonderful? Will that be during the Dreaded Teen Years? I guess that could be. But rest assured that even then, no matter how rebellious you may feel, or how uncool you think I am, or how misunderstood you know you are - I guarantee you that I will still think you are wonderful, and I will still love you, because I am your mom, and that is my job.

Let's face it.  Even if it wasn't my job, I couldn't help myself. 

Love,
Mom

Comments

[Mags]

I love this letter to your 9 month old. Very precious and loving. I stumbled across this entry somehow but am grateful that I did. I too love telling my daughter everyday that I love her. I know this is an old entry from 2004 but still it means a lot!