Coping

I cannot deal with these baby gates. They require some sort of mental fortitude to install that I do not, at this precise moment, possess, even though now is the time to put them up, as I have figured out where they should go, and you are occupied with our lovely neighbor who you love, and my in-laws are not arrived yet. And yet I opened one of them, unfolded the instructions, glazed over, panicked slightly, and fled into the kitchen to eat cheese.

I have noticed, incidentally, that you also like to eat cheese when you are out of sorts or upset. Typical.

I am whiplashed by how quickly you have changed in the past week. I fear that the age of playpens was brief and undistinguished. Now you want only to stagger around, holding onto my index fingers, groaning like something out of the zombie apocalypse as you stomp your baby feet after the poor long suffering dog. He's gotten good at staying just out of reach, watchful because that's his job, to watch over us, but without being in too much danger of losing a baby fistful of orange and white fur. The other day you yanked on one of his ears like a bell pull, as if you were a Gilded Age lady impatiently summoning her maid. Your father has obtained a sort of baby sledge for you, which is mean to be pushed around with enough resistance that it should help you walk, but you are mad at it right now. You don't want to push it. You want to learn about its wheels, which means tipping it over, which means it falling on your sweet baby foot, and that was unpleasant for everyone involved. You haven't forgiven the sledge yet for its audacity.

I, too, hold grudges against inanimate objects. It's why I don't want Nana and Grandpa's dining table.

Anyhoo. The baby gates. I haven't installed them. Presumably as the cheese gradually takes hold I will feel better about them in general. They look nice, they're sturdy, they will do what I ask them to do, so all that is good. Perhaps I will be ready for them tomorrow. We shall see.

Nermal

Oh my gosh, SUCCOTASH what am I going to do with you? In three days you have gone from baby to toddler. I didn't entirely understand how quickly that would happen. You now pull up and grasp onto objects and stagger around like a little drunkard and use your hands to cruise around the room. Crawling, you have decided, is for punks and sellouts. You are so excited about walking that you cannot sleep. Last night we spent two hours trying to get you down, and then you awoke what felt like every hour or so just overwrought. Very very Nermal-like (the world's cutest kitten). Right now you are playing at the neighbors and I have to measure doorways and tops of stairs to babyproof the bejeezus out of this house immediately. Good lord.

You also have learned that dropping things from your high chair is a fun game. Our new approach is to return things to you if they fall accidentally, but not if you throw them down and then give us an impish smile. You beast.

You are particularly invested in the footposts on our new bed upstairs. They are the perfect height for you to grasp and touch and inspect. You want to be carried less and stiff-arm me into putting you down, but if I put you down in your playpen your little face crumples and then I pick you up again. Then you stiff-arm me to be put down, because it is the floor that you want. The floor! To the floor, Mama!

I have sort of stopped calling you Succotash to your face, which makes me a little sad, but you have an organic nickname that seems to suit you, and which I catch myself using naturally in a way that Succotash was not. In any case, Succotash was my imaginary baby. And you are you.

You frustrate me when you are obviously tired and refusing to nap because you want to stand on the floor and investigate the bedposts. It's a tough balance, as I have learned that baby naps are important for parents too, not just babies. But in general you are still smiley and charming and the only person I want to see at six in the morning.

Now, to order those baby gates....

Nine Months

You are upstairs playing in our new shower with your father, and I hear you making contented "oohhh wahoow wahooow" sounds all the way down three flights of stairs, so I know that I have a minute to note down your state of affairs on this, your nine month birthday, official moment in which you have been outside my body for longer than you were inside it.

You have two teeth. But you are still a huge partisan of nursing, perhaps even moreso than in your tiny infancy. The other night while reading your favorite book, when we got to the part where the pigs say "LA LA LA," you said "LA LA LA" along with us. You are tall, and you stand by yourself, and I have seen you balance briefly and pass a block from one hand to another before having to hold on again. You will walk, I think, any minute. You have been observed to crawl, but you hate it. You love Milo, and your parents, and Callie, our neighbor who now watches you sometimes while waiting for her big banking job to begin.

You are almost a little boy.

But not quite.