Dear Jack, my little Tomato Face,

Today you are 11 months old. You're rounding the corner on one whole year! It's a lot more like careening headlong, danger and misadventure at every turn. What a month! You kept me moving all month long, and caught me on my heels a couple of times. You were "cautiously" cruising around the furniture last month. This month you are boldly stepping out. You've taken as many as 13 unassisted steps in a row, preferring to walk on carpet or grass instead of our hardwood floors. Smart boy. Then again, you exhibit so little fear of falling that I wonder when your judgment will kick in.

As the pediatrician was stitching up your finger a couple of weeks ago, (yeah...we'll get to that), she exclaimed "He's a brute!" How true. You are stronger than you know, and you've started slapping, manhandling, pushing, shoving, all without malice, but I'm bearing some of the evidence. You flip over your big toys, push heavy furniture around, and pull with all your might on locked cabinets. A few times a day I'm led to say, "HULK SMASH" under my breath. You had a little run in with a drinking glass as you were helping me unload the dishwasher and you got four stitches as a result. You may escape with a little scar, but your mama is scarred deep. Thank you for being a good sport through the whole experience. We couldn't both fall apart that fateful morning!

You've started giving us kisses, big, brutish, open-mouthed things that you end with a huge "waaah." If you're quiet, I'm sure you would hear the pitter patter of my heart. However, you're rarely quiet. You talk a lot, and this month several real words have emerged. Mama and Dah-deee are discriminate, and you say daw for dog, duh for duck, and bawh for ball. You love to make a motorboat/helicopter noise all day long.

Tomatoes have become your favorite food. While you still don't "act" that much like you are hungry or excited about food, you will eat chunks of fresh tomato until they're all gone. You also like strawberries, cucumbers, pickles, and cheese. You still like beans and zucchini and sometimes you will eat chicken. I gave you a lemon wedge when your Tia Khelen and Uncle Paul were in town, and you made us all laugh by wincing and shuddering, then going for more.

Your honey blond hair is actually a little darker than I thought it would be, but I have a feeling when we come back from the beach next month you will be white blond. I have considered cutting your hair, but I think I will wait until you're one. We'll see. Your hair is constantly stuck to your sweaty head anyway. It's starting to "curl" up over your ears, by which I mean it flips out a little bit. You still cry to go outside, and cry when we come in. I love that you want to be outdoors, and I'm doing my best to accomodate!

Your determination is amazing. You can't be distracted from something that you want, and if something is out of reach, you will stand on your tip toes and s-t-r-e-t-c-h and reach, often to your peril. I hope you keep this determination throughout your life, and use it to stay true to yourself and to do good for other people. I will try my best not to break your will.

I'm struck daily by just how cool you are. I'm amazed by you. You are learning and growing at a fearful, wonderful pace. I am growing right along with you, and praying I can keep up.

Walk tall, little man. I am so very proud of you.

Mama

mother's day

this time last year
i thought i had a week or so
you thought differently and stayed another month
but you came when you came
and the sky was brighter.
last mother's day i cradled you entirely
and you were a stranger to me
i loved you entirely, and yet i didn't know what love was.
this year, i can only cradle you in part,
in the crook of my weighed-down arms
and the part of my heart that will keep cradling,
even when you can rest your chin on my head.

Dear Jack (my little vampire),

Today you are 10 months old. The sun is shining. A good rain recently washed away most of the pollen that coated our little world, and our dogwoods bloom brighter and bigger than the past couple of years. You love to be outside and stare out the back door while I wash dishes or make our breakfast. As the grass fills in, we'll spend more time out there. I look forward to the day when you can play out back as much as you like. To mud behind your ears and grass stains on your knees.

This past month was long like the last, but so much has happened. You're fully in that famous separation anxiety phase. You're fine with other people, and you're even content to be in the nursery at church...as long as I'm not in sight. When I am, you're clinging to my legs, begging to be picked up. It's the most tiring phase yet (for your mama). I feel lucky that you are a social butterfly, and you will happily go to friends. If I'm sneaky enough, I can slip away unnoticed and you are fine until you see me again. Some days, when it's just the two of us, we have to leave the house to give me a little break.

You're collecting girlfriends all over the place. Boyfriends, too. No matter where we go, at least a couple of people comment on your bright eyes or your large size, or your overall cuteness. And you are cute. So very cute! You have developed this "cheese" face, where you smile and scrunch your eyes almost completely closed. You also cheese when you're mad. We're starting to have to react to your moods, and that's new. We have to make sure you know it's not funny to angrily squeal and slam down your cup. Even if it means turning our heads so you can't see us grinning.

You're getting pretty good with a cup. You prefer a regular cup to the kind with handles. You stopped eating regular food almost altogether for a few days. But we'll get to that later. You've been eating more, but still not much. You are so very insistent that I not feed you anything. You must feed yourself. You've been eating peaches, pears, apples, bananas, and bread the most. Still no purees, and I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed. You seem to love cooked zucchini and black beans, as much as you love any food (again, not much). Still, every now and then you'll seem really excited about eating. I just don't know when, or why.

The complete food strike of two weeks ago was explained on Easter Sunday, when you presented us with your first tooth! In classic Jack style, you got your incisor or canine (I'm not really sure which it is) on the top right before the typical bottom front teeth. You are my little snaggletoothed vampire. Three days later, you got the bottom left tooth. Which one will be next? All of your gums seem swollen, top and bottom, so it's anyone's guess. I sort of expect (and hope) you to get your teeth quickly now. You have been the longest teether!

I have saved my favorite development for last: the dance. My son, you've never heard a beat you couldn't jive to. When you hear a steady drum, your little knees start bouncing. If you're sitting down, you start to slap your hands on the ground, or look for a place to stand up so you can bounce. It's awesome. Music can cure your moods, too. I love that you love to hear music and I promise to fill your life with as much of it as I can.

Keep on dancing, my love.

Mama

Tonight

I looked at your dad and he looked at me as we were playing in your room before bed and I can say unequivocally that I have never, ever been happier than in that moment in the dim light of dusk next to a pile of old books and scattered toys with the two people I love most.

Dear Jack,

Today you are 9 months old. Do you feel my eyes boring holes in the back of your head? No? Well, I certainly can't look away anymore. Not long after my last letter to you, you started booking it. You are so fast crawling now. Just a day or two after you mastered that, you started pulling up to stand. You stood at the edge of the coffee table, the couch, my leg, anything stationary long enough for you to grasp. See that past tense, there? Yeah. You don't really do that anymore.



Two days after you first stood up, you started climbing. We thought it would be cute to break out a walking toy that you could use to stand up. Push it if you like. Stand there and look cute if you'd rather. Well, you did push it, walking behind it with surprising grace and never losing your balance. Your need for adventure, however, remained unsatiated. Within a few hours of pushing this toy the normal way (forward), you decided it would be more fun to push it backward, right up to the couch. Instead of expressing frustration that it wouldn't move, you climbed right up onto it. It's been all climbing ever since. The bathtub, the kitchen stools, the couches, the bookcases. You are a little monkey.



I admit to being completely unprepared for this. Aren't you supposed to walk first? Will I find you on top of the refrigerator next week? Sigh. Yawn. Your mama is tired.

Also this month, the joy of cabinets. Opening and closing them. Trying to chew the knobs. Pulling the tupperware out. You also like to play with the handle on the toilet. You haven't figured out how to open the lid yet, but truly, nothing is safe. No amount of child-proofing will hinder you.



You LOVE to be outside and cry at the door when I let the dog out. Soon enough, we will spend most of our days out there. We took a walk with Kassi, Emma, and Lael yesterday and you seemed to be in heaven. It will be rainy and chilly some more, but soon the sun will stay out and the days will be longer and the grass green and not so scratchy. We won't be cooped up in the house all day. I'll be digging acorns out of your cheeks instead of dog food.

Oh yeah, food! You started eating a lot more this month. No baby food, of course. What is baby food to a mountain climber? I've been sharing my dinner with you and making you a little breakfast buffet each morning. You like bits of cheese, apple, melon, pear, and hunks of bread. While you still don't get super excited about any particular food, you seemed to enjoy zucchini from a stir fry we had the other night and black beans from a soup. Potatoes, carrots, banana.

The best development last month, dear son, is the evolution of your "Gooseface" from a scrunched up nose and furrowed brow, to a squinty-eyed grin that use to make us laugh. You are a clown. My clown!



I don't have the energy to wax eloquent this month, but my heart sings with pride for all that you are, even as it skips a beat when I see you tottering on the edge of a precipice.

I love you always,

Mama

February is for lovers (and Great-Grandmothers)

Jack is fortunate enough to have three living great-grandmothers. We managed to see all three this month. Not pictured: my Grandma Rhodes. I miss her terribly.

From the top: G.G. Dunn (Jacksonville, FL), G.G. Brackett (Fayetteville, NC), and Memaw (Pageland, SC)

Dear Jack,

Today you are eight months old. At the beginning of this month, I was adrift in feelings of inadequacy, confusion, and a general, overwhelming fatigue. Here at the end, I still have all of those feelings at times, but I'm becoming more comfortable being your mom. I've been looking for some normalcy. It's actually been here all along, I just didn't recognize it. You are you; you are unique, and that is our normal.

When we first fall in love as young adults, it's easy to think that no one on the face of the earth has ever felt this way - that two people have never loved with a love like the one we feel in those early days. It's a glorious, fleeting isolation. As I have fallen in love with you since last June, I've had a very different feeling. When I look at you and (literally) see you learning and growing and needing me but bending toward independence, I can't help but think of the billions of people who have felt this way for eons. The way your Gram felt love for me. The way you (God willing) will feel about your child one day. It's a glorious connectedness. It's the club I didn't know I was longing to join.

This month started with a lot of sameness - a plateau (albeit brief) of cranky teethiness, rolling and scooching and frustration, and interrupted sleep. The month ends with a sprint! In the last two weeks, you have started crawling on all fours, belly off the floor. You've added more and more consonants - F, G, Z, N and sing them in a morning litany. You ate with gusto at the Superbowl party last weekend, bits of chicken and cheese. Tiny chunks of carrots and bread the next day. We moved you to your big car seat and you seem pleased to have a better view. You're still sweet and happy and silly and fully willing to turn on the charm and make folks happy. I still get a buzz from being your escort. You are gorgeous, with hair growing in thicker and bright blue eyes that rarely escape comment. Your cheeks are rosy and full. You look like (as my Grandma Katie would have said) "a picture postcard."

Just this week I passed a milestone of some note - 10 years with MS. When these anniversaries pass, I can't help but feel an overwhelming gratitude - just for life and limb, for ability, for breath. And this year, for you. What a gift you are, and what a gift I have been given to be able to mother you.

I love you. Mean it.

Mama