Ten Months and Three Days

 Sweet Succotash! Or should I say Nermal. What a busy few days you have had. We celebrated your tenth month with a picnic on Old Burial Hill, in which you discovered picnic spoons and roamed among the headstones in striped overalls and a small bucket hat. At ten months and one day, the very day after your poor granddad returned to Florida, you took three unassisted quick little steps towards a rolling felt ball. You obligingly repeated the performance for your mother and her waiting cell phone, so I thank you for that. You have also begun to wave. You wave goodbye, and smile happily, and you wave hello on occasion. You are breaking through your top two incisors, which is giving you a tough time. One of them is through your gum, and one isn't quite. It's messing with your sleep, but you are handling it gamely. 

Your Manamana is here to help, but we are all realizing that there is more to helping with a nearly walking, practically toddler Succotash than any of us had perhaps anticipated. And so we have found a way for you to start going to a Montessori up in Beverly. I am trepidatious about it, but they have a plan for easing babies into it, and as I start to know your emergent character I come to think that you will really love it. You will have a whole room to roam and investigate and no one trying to keep you out of trouble. I think you will relish the freedom. And you so far have loved other babies. I know it will be good for you. And for us, as we will learn parenting things from their teachers who know babies better than we do, and we will also have time to do our actual jobs. But the first day they send me away is going to be tough. For me, if not for you.

Later this afternoon we will take you swimming in the baby pool, after a morning in which we all frolicked in the sprinkler. We are lucky to be here and not in NYC. No sprinklers or baby pools for us there. 

The world outside continues terrifying, but here at home, we have newly installed baby gates to keep you safe, and we have started to change your diaper on the floor, with you standing up. At moments I catch a glimpse of what your little boy face will look like, but you still have warm and rosy baby cheeks when you wake up in my arms from a nap, and I can still rain kisses on you. At least, for now. Still my baby. Though not for very much longer.