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....