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Tuesday
May262009
Dear Solo
May 26, 2009
And just like that, you are nine months old.
You scoot, you have one tooth (and are cutting at least three more oh help us Sweet Mercy please cut those teeth already Solo before I run off into the hills) and you like to put anything you find into your mouth.
90% of my current waking time is now devoted to scanning the floors around you in search of debris. There must be no debris within pinching sight of you at any time. Sigh.
It is a joyful thing, for a family to have a baby to dote on. YaYa bosses you around, Kid A tickles you until I tell him, Stop Already, and Leafy hugs you and loves you. When YaYa is sad, she usually hunts for any warm body to cuddle with, and often these days, it's you. Perhaps because you don't turn to her and ask her to please stop crying so loudly in your ear, rather you just turn your head and look at her quizzically, as if to say, "What new game is this?"
We love you! What more can I say? At any moment, someone is playing with you... maybe your Aunty Becca, or Tripta, our neighbor, or Cat, or you are kicking and screaming with glee because you caught sight of Kid A, your oldest brother whom you look at with what can only be called Hero Worship. I have never seen anyone as delighted with another person's mere presence as you are with Kid A. Is it his large deer shaped eyes? Or maybe it is his six-year-old self, hyper and leaping out of his skin, which matches your nine-month-old super-charged leaping out of your skin exactly? At any rate, he has only to appear in your peripheral vision and you are over the moon.
You've mastered "food" and "more" with baby sign. Good job, laddie. Although we really really need to get you some sort of high chair, because now that you can scoot, feeding you has become a rodeo event. We used to just sit you on the floor, but there are so many interesting things in the room! How can you sit still and allow yourself to be fed? Straps, my son, the answer is Straps.
Who do you look like? It's kind of funny, because you look like Leafy (almost exactly, except he was about seven shades darker, even at your age) and you look like me. Simultaneously, which is weird, because I've always thought that Leafy and I look the least alike in the whole family. Genes. What can you say about them? I suppose that most of all, you look like you.
And oh, no letter to you would be complete without the mention of you and your numnums. You LOVE NUMNUMS. If there was one thing that you could share with the world, it would be that you. Love. Your. Numnums. I peeked at your brother's nine-month letter and it mentioned his love of numnums too, and the fact that sometimes the strength of his desire for numnums made holding him feel like wrestling a beaver, as he tried to get into the right place. What a perfect metaphor! Wrestling a beaver. Only with you, (you are a giant baby) the metaphor would be more accurate if we said wrestling a baby polar bear.
Sometimes when we lie in bed and nurse, I curl around you a bit, and our tummies are touching, and I stroke your hair. You hold my hand and I think that I have never in my life had so much love in me.
It's probably true. You and your brothers and sister have swelled my heart to ridiculous proportions.
Love,
Your Mama
You scoot, you have one tooth (and are cutting at least three more oh help us Sweet Mercy please cut those teeth already Solo before I run off into the hills) and you like to put anything you find into your mouth.
90% of my current waking time is now devoted to scanning the floors around you in search of debris. There must be no debris within pinching sight of you at any time. Sigh.
It is a joyful thing, for a family to have a baby to dote on. YaYa bosses you around, Kid A tickles you until I tell him, Stop Already, and Leafy hugs you and loves you. When YaYa is sad, she usually hunts for any warm body to cuddle with, and often these days, it's you. Perhaps because you don't turn to her and ask her to please stop crying so loudly in your ear, rather you just turn your head and look at her quizzically, as if to say, "What new game is this?"
We love you! What more can I say? At any moment, someone is playing with you... maybe your Aunty Becca, or Tripta, our neighbor, or Cat, or you are kicking and screaming with glee because you caught sight of Kid A, your oldest brother whom you look at with what can only be called Hero Worship. I have never seen anyone as delighted with another person's mere presence as you are with Kid A. Is it his large deer shaped eyes? Or maybe it is his six-year-old self, hyper and leaping out of his skin, which matches your nine-month-old super-charged leaping out of your skin exactly? At any rate, he has only to appear in your peripheral vision and you are over the moon.
You've mastered "food" and "more" with baby sign. Good job, laddie. Although we really really need to get you some sort of high chair, because now that you can scoot, feeding you has become a rodeo event. We used to just sit you on the floor, but there are so many interesting things in the room! How can you sit still and allow yourself to be fed? Straps, my son, the answer is Straps.
Who do you look like? It's kind of funny, because you look like Leafy (almost exactly, except he was about seven shades darker, even at your age) and you look like me. Simultaneously, which is weird, because I've always thought that Leafy and I look the least alike in the whole family. Genes. What can you say about them? I suppose that most of all, you look like you.
And oh, no letter to you would be complete without the mention of you and your numnums. You LOVE NUMNUMS. If there was one thing that you could share with the world, it would be that you. Love. Your. Numnums. I peeked at your brother's nine-month letter and it mentioned his love of numnums too, and the fact that sometimes the strength of his desire for numnums made holding him feel like wrestling a beaver, as he tried to get into the right place. What a perfect metaphor! Wrestling a beaver. Only with you, (you are a giant baby) the metaphor would be more accurate if we said wrestling a baby polar bear.
Sometimes when we lie in bed and nurse, I curl around you a bit, and our tummies are touching, and I stroke your hair. You hold my hand and I think that I have never in my life had so much love in me.
It's probably true. You and your brothers and sister have swelled my heart to ridiculous proportions.
Love,
Your Mama
Reader Comments (10)
I too always wondered how my 2 kids could be so fair skinned like me yet be the spitting image of there Dad who is Indian... Genes indeed!!
The growth of your family both physically and spiritually is always worth documenting somewhere and I'm truly delighted you feel able to share it with all of your cyber buddies! x
I love "Mommy letters"! Yours are great. And Solo is too cute, just like the rest of your kids :)
It's funny how attached I feel to Solo, having followed his progress since his very birth. I agree that he looks very much like you, but also like Leafy, and of course completely and absolutely Solo.
I'm curious to see what type of highchairs they sell (make?) in the Himalayas. Would you need to bring it up to your home on a donkey? That would really be a very very high highchair, hehehe.
You are an amazing mama! Love those pictures. He is getting so huge! Can't wait to see him and meet him, and reconnect with Kid A, YaYa, and Leafy.
With a name like Solo, he would of course have to look only like himself, heh?
What a beautiful boy. His life sounds perfect.
What a LOVELY tender letter.
Surrounded by love - a wonderful way to get a jumpstart on life.
Ohhh, nine months, that's how old yaya was when I first met you. sigh!
Beautiful! Coming out of lurkdom to suggest you try "tying" him to a chair with some sort of fabric strap contraption. I had good luck with that with some of my little ones when high chairs were not available. =)
Thank you so much for sharing lovely peeks at your life.