Month 11

Dear Simon,

You are eleven months old now, and I hate to admit it, but too often instead of savoring eleven, I find myself thinking of you as “almost a year.” Almost a year.

You are so inquisitive, and in fact this is probably the most prominent characteristic of your personality so far. You have to stop and check out everything in your path—feel its texture, turn it over in your hand, taste it. Grandpa Carlson teases you that someday it will take you hours to get home from school because you’ll be so distracted by all the thises and thats that you find on the way. You are also sensitive to sounds, often pausing to listen when the furnace kicks on or the dishwasher changes cycles or a motorcycle zooms by outside. I love having this constant reminder of how much there is to learn, every day, all the time.

This month we celebrated Christmas with you for the first time. You actually did pretty well staying out of the tree and away from the presents. You did grow curious about the curly ribbons, and eventually you learned to use the wrapped boxes to steady yourself as you reached for the lowest ornaments. And I suppose you ate more than your fair share of needles, but all in all Mama was glad we braved having a tree.

And you are loving all your new gifts—blocks and shapes and noisy things—and you didn’t even notice that I put away a whole big container of “baby toys.” You did get one gift, though, that you H-A-T-E-D: a train from Aunt Rhonda. You were fine with the “choo-choo” noises, as long as it didn’t move, but when it started to chug toward you, I have never seen you move so fast. Poor little guy, you were terrified. And I am so, so sorry that it was so cute. Even the next morning, you heard the train from the other room (Mama accidentally bumped it) and it still made you cry. Don’t worry, we took the batteries out of the devil train. (And, of course, you are just as happy with a measuring cup or plastic spoon as you are with “fancy” toys anyway.)

You are doing better at eating big people food, and you have surprised us by liking spicier food like curry and chili. Over the holidays you made both sides of your family proud by tolerating our ethnic food traditions—Swedish kroppkaka and potato sausage for Christmas and German New Year’s cookies. You finally pushed another tooth through (for a total of four, two up top and two below), and you seem to be getting the concept of chewing down, though more often than not you just shove a bunch of stuff in your mouth and let it get soggy enough to swallow (kinda grody). You are still pretty adamant about feeding yourself, and, hey, that’s fine by me.

We are going a little stir crazy in the house this winter, and I will be glad when it warms up a little to let you explore outside. We went one day with Liv and Rebecca to the the Pioneer Park Nature Center, because Liv was going a little crazy too. You loved touching the bull snake and watching the (wounded) birds (falcons maybe?). Come to think of it, you seem to really like any animal you encounter. You especially loved meeting Jersey, Pastor Tobey’s dog; he actually made you giggle with delight.

You have the perfect little crawl, exemplary form, really; we should make an instructional video. Every day I think you go a little farther, a little faster (and in so many of the pictures I took of you this month, you are crawling away from me). Your favorite activity in the whole world right now is climbing the stairs; you especially love to pull yourself up by the slats at the top of the first set of steps. The first time you made it to the top all by yourself, you were so happy that you crawled in circles on the landing, which made me laugh hard. You climb every chance you get, and you just don’t seem to get tired of it.

It’s possible that you are finally saying “Mama,” after a month or two of saying “Dada” (first to everything and later seemingly more specifically to actually indicate Daddy). I say “possible” because we’re still not positive that you are actually meaning Mom and Dad. We’ll give it a little more time before we start bragging about that too much—I’m not quite willing to say these are your actual first words until you start to use them more regularly. You do babble quite a bit, and sometimes quite adamantly. Often you get this serious look on your face, as though whatever you just said settled the matter once and for all.

Oh how Mama loves you, little man.