Eleven Months

Dear One,

You're sitting in your high chair shoveling small bites of pizza (one of your favorites) into your mouth. You alternate between throwing a piece on the floor--your newest and most annoying excellent game--and cramming one into your mouth. It's astounding what you can do with two and half teeth. The bottom two are all the way in, albeit a bit crooked, and you've sprouted a top one. It's off to the side so at this point you can still say that all you want for your birthday is your two front teeth. I realize that's generally a Christmas wish and a request typically used for permanent teeth but there isn't a rule that says you can't ask for baby teeth for your birthday.

Your birthday. Next month you will turn one and that's just not even a situation I can wrap my head around. At times these eleven months have flown with the speed of a jet and yet, in some ways, it seems a very long time since that day in late February when we first laid eyes on you.

You walk everywhere now. Crawling is still your quickest mode of transportation but you can easily take fifteen to twenty steps without falling. Both hands are always either pulled way up by your face or straight out, for balance. Sometimes it looks like you might start flapping them in hopes of taking flight. Always, always, you have this smug looks that seems to say, "Yeah. I'm big now. I'm walking. You want an autograph?" And I kind of do. Your brother was easily thirteen months old before he walked with the efficiency that you do at exactly eleven. So, yeah, it's a little impressive to me. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you took three steps on Christmas Eve and here you are walking like a champion a month later.

I think you'll attempt to master the motor skills long before you decide to tackle the verbal ones. Just like when your brother was a baby, you care a lot more about learning how to get into stuff than you do about sitting down and having a conversation. This month, in addition to "mama" and "dada" you've added "uh oh" and "Bah!" (Beck) to your verbal repertoire. You also have some kind of unintelligible babble sound that you yell when you want Garrett's attention. It sounds nothing like "Garrett" but it's the same every time.

Your favorite times of day are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Kid, you'd eat all day long if we'd let you. You're still getting the occasional jar of baby food but, for the most part, you want to eat what we're eating. This month your bio dad came to visit for two days and he could not believe your ability to gnaw on an apple slice while we took turns shoveling bites of blueberry baby food into your mouth. He marveled that you were going to appear on an episode of Man vs. Food some day. Later that night you wolfed down some of his french fries along with several bites of my pancakes. Just one meal in the life of a boy who loves himself some food.

I don't know what is going to happen over the course of the next three months, what events might transpire that will shape your future. What I do know is that God has known each day from the very beginning. Psalm 139:13-16 says "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

This time next month I'll be singing you Happy Birthday. It's been an incredible eleven months. I love you.