Dear Nico,
You’re eleven months old, and clearly done with immobility. No more wobbling across the floor; you still need the support of grownup hands, but given your druthers, you’d be running. Zoom! Unless you’re practicing your drunken-sailor walk—there’s still a lot of that. Whatever the speed, my hands are too busy holding you up to take photos.
My back gets pretty sore, you know. So your holiday gift from mama is a baby hand truck, the kind you can stash toys in and wheel around the house. You’re slightly suspicious of it, and not quite steady enough to go freewheelin’ yet.
The other day we were zooming around the apartment, and then you skidded to a stop to look at your reflection in the mirror. The reflection grinned and squealed with delight, and then you two very gently bumped your foreheads together. You learned that trick from your five-year-old friend Pip, or was it your four-year-old friend Syl? They both like playing the game where you ever so lightly bump foreheads and then the other kid flails and falls over onto his back. That’s a fun game. But your reflection didn’t fall over onto his back, so you just stood there giggling and licking the mirror, patting each other’s hand.
Hard to say what the best game of the month is. There are so many, and everything is the best. Cats, CEILING FANS, curtains, people, building blocks, socks, drums, the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink, oh dear, I should really install baby locks on some of these things. Favorite game of the past week, though, is increasingly: sit down with a box full of blocks, take blocks out one by one, and throw them on the floor until they’re spread out more or less in a circle around you, in a single layer. And then you’re the king of all you survey.
Firsts for this month include antibiotics, oh did I mention you’ve been sick for five weeks? It’s finally getting better, but not before we take care of this stealth ear infection. This part isn’t awesome, but at least the medicine is tasty enough. And while having one or both of us be sick for weeks on end can get dispiriting for your caretakers, it’s not like this has slowed you down much. We still had a completely lovely solstice with some of our favorite people, including sunrise on the river again. We still spend time with our friends. We still bounce and giggle and read books (your favorite right now is Little Penguin, which has a finger puppet right in the book, and Global Babies, which has photos of babies from around the world).
The baby NAZ fan club is ridiculous. That most of our friends are into you isn’t surprising. But then there are supermarket cashiers, burly guys at the body shop, doctors, our new veterinarian. What I’m saying is: your plan for world domination is proceeding apace. Good going, babe.
Love,
-Mama
(more pix)