Eleven Months

Dear Nathan,

Your personality is starting to shine through and you have serious opinions about how your time is spent.  You are a thoughtful doer, personally exploring every inch of the world that you can reach. 

Nathan you have an explorers heart  and you let it lead you without any permission from us. You taught yourself how to the climb the stairs while we weren’t looking and we find you up there doing your own thing more often than I’d like to admit. You’ve only fallen down once and only Emily was there to see. You are very quiet in your adventures. 

One day we had just finished a diaper change and I turned my back you you were gone. You didn’t respond to my calls while I checked all of your usual places: the bathtub, toilet, top of the stairs, hallway closet, Emily’s old room with the books. I found you in the back corner of the far bedroom, analyzing the baby monitor.

Currently you have an ongoing mission to put your hands in the toilet. You succeed about 30% of the time. As you patrol the downstairs you nonchalantly meander by the bathroom door ever 15 minutes or so to see if someone left it open or if you can pull it open from the bottom. It is a cause of great frustration if we pull you away.

 Nathan you are catapulting yourself into the big kid group. You have three little girls in our neighborhood around your age that you love playing with outside. Typically you congregate at the base of the metal slide to drum on together or fill it with sand. Yesterday you hung out by a nearby tree with a small plaque at the bottom and played with that for a solid 10-15 minutes. Even when your friend left you stayed to explore further. 

The sand at the playground is your latest area of discovery. You crawl around with your arms straight out and down, feeling the sand wash over your hands and arms. You dig in it and drop handfuls and watch it fall to the ground. Yesterday you hung over the pole of the teeter totter structure with your head resting on the yellow bar and your fingers running over the sand. 

Another routine stop that you developed on your own is standing at the window and watching what is out there. 

Your most recent development is clicking your tongue. Your tongue sticks halfway out your mouth while you do it. 

Reading is very much an independent practice for you still. You will spend a lot of time flipping through books on the floor but you don’t like it when we try to read to you. You did come join Emily and I when I was reading to her on the couch and look at the pictures a little bit, but mostly you just shared her snack as she handed you all the raisins. When they were all gone I gave you your own cup with raisins and you stood next to us looking so old with a cup in one hand and the other carefully working the raisin from the middle of your palm to your index finger and thumb to put in your mouth. 

You strongly prefer eating independently than being fed by us. You often spit out whatever we put into your mouth via fork and then pick it back up to eat yourself. If there is something new that we put on your tray you want to try it immediately and drop what ever was in your hand and spit out what was in your mouth. You have strong preferences about food now but you still try just about everything before refusing. Strawberries are your favorite food and you yell if you see them and aren’t eating them. You mostly communicate by staring really hard at what you want and if that doesn’t work you add in yelling.

You have started sleeping through the night consistently and no longer use a pacifier. The transition to no pacifier was a bit rough with lots of crying, but you are a rather adaptable sleeper. Naps are short and you’ve started dropping one nap about half of the week, even though you are exhausted by the end of the day. 

You have four teeth on top and two on the bottom, with signs that more teeth should be appearing soon.

You have brought laughter into our home Nathan. For example, you start laughing and drumming at the table after you aren’t hungry (we know you are full because you are thinking about something besides food). We join in the drumming and see you getting more and more excited and start laughing along. Then you start laughing because we are laughing, and we are laughing because you are laughing. This can last a good 5-10 minutes and my muscles just ache from all the laughter.  

Our family games are more exciting with your input – you move your arms high in the air and wave them up and down, making excited noises. You love playing chase with us and often try and get Emily to chase you by frantically crawling towards me and twisting and spinning around. You also just lay down and rest wherever you’re at when you are tired.

We needed you to be in our family Nathan, and we are so grateful you are here.