My darling little buddy,
You are 10 months old, little man, and weigh 18 lb, 5 oz, with your weight gain having slowed dramatically in recent months. You've got three teeth, with nos. 4 and 5 just about to come through. This month has been a big one for your motor skills development. There are the little things, like learning you need to tip your cup up to drink, which you now do with comical enthusiasm. Or knowing you need to remove your pacifier from your mouth to nurse, or eat, or chew on some other interesting item. Now you efficiently eject the pacifier, sometimes a surprising distance, but I confess I'll kind of miss your little routine of trying to put something in your mouth while the pacifier was in place and looking confused when it wasn't working out so well. Then there are the big things... you figured out how to move yourself into a sitting position mid-way through the month. You started properly crawling on your knees the day before you turned 10 months old, and just a few days after that you were regularly pulling yourself to stand. Actually, the very first time you pulled yourself to a standing position was a day or two after you first sat yourself up on your own. You were making a keen effort to pull up on the toilet and I thought, "Knock yourself out; that's never gonna happen." Then you only went and did it like it was no big deal. You promptly fell over and went back for another go, bumping your head on the bowl as you did so which made you cry. You left off trying for another couple of weeks and when you managed it again - much more sensibly using the stair gate - you laughed and laughed because you were so proud of yourself.
A wise friend predicted that once you were mobile you'd probably be a much happier little soul, and she was entirely correct. You are now quite happy to play independently for significant stretches of time, and as your daddy points out you are almost always on a mission of some sort. I could say that your new-found motor skills have made my life easier, but I would be lying. In fact, you are a bit of a terror and looking after both your sister and yourself in the same room has become like some kind of aptitude test, "Are you smarter than a 10 month old?" Sadly, I fear the answer is often no. There isn't a toy in the world that could hold your attention if your sister is involved in playing within your field of vision, and bless her, she loves you so much that she wants to play where you are but then expects me to run interference. It's exhausting trying to stay one step ahead of you. Sometimes when we get back home in the car, I just rest there a bit before extricating you from the car seat, savouring a few minutes of peace when I don't have to worry about what sort of trouble you are going to get into next. Speaking of exhausting, any hope I had that you would have simply grown into reasonable overnight sleep habits by now was entirely in vain. I'm not sure if it's developmental, or teething or what, but in the past few weeks you not only wake frequently in the night, you've sometimes stayed awake and you expect me to do so as well. Even worse, after a period of charming grins and coos, you start to get just about as irritated as I am that you are up. This is not a welcome development, so if you could sort it out that'd be great, mm-kay?
This month you added "Mum-mum-mum" to your babbling repertoire and it is adorable. I could listen to you chat and babble endlessly. You've become much more conversational, and are happy to imitate and repeat the sounds I make, so long as they're in your current "vocabulary." In the past couple evenings before bedtime, though, you have deployed an open-mouthed yell with both impressive volume and longevity, not unlike Jim Carrey's most-annoying-sound-in-the-world in Dumb and Dumber. You can stop that anytime.You're changing so quickly now, stacking up milestones one by one and the days of your infancy are inexorably slipping by. I should be proud and excited for these developments, and I promise I am. But don't be in too much of a hurry, my child, and forgive me if I wish you'd stay a baby just a little bit longer.
I love you with all my heart,
Mummy
