A Girl Named PJ

Dear Levi,

You are eleven months old! How is it possible that in just four weeks you will be one year old? This month I’ve been feeling especially nostalgic and spending lots of time looking at photos of you as a tiny newborn. You are so loud and full of personality now that it’s almost impossible to remember you as a quiet little baby who slept all day.

You have been showing signs of teething for the past month, including drooling, crying and a decrease in appetite. Every morning your daddy asks, “Do we have teeth today?” but they haven’t broken through yet. There are visible bumps where the bottom two teeth will be, though! Because you are less hungry and more irritable, it still seems to take forever to get through a meal. My friends have commented that they’ve never seen a baby eat so slowly!

You may be a slow eater, but you are a fast crawler and now prefer to be on the move rather than confined to your exersaucer. You’ll still bounce in your jumper but aren’t content to spend as much time in it as you used to be. Playing in the basement, you discovered how to use the bottom step to push yourself into a modified downward facing dog. Using that technique, you were able to crawl up two low steps at your friend Alex’s house! We joined Gymboree so that you would have another safe place to crawl, climb and explore.

Daddy returned home from an 8-week training session shortly after you turned 10 months old, and we tag-teamed bedtime for a while. We were both in your nursery when you pulled yourself up to standing in your crib for the first time; I was trying to dress you for bed, and your daddy was cleaning up your toys and books. When I called out that he needed to look over at you, he didn’t realize that you were standing! At first he only noticed that you still had your shirt stuck over your head! We watched and watched, hoping you’d stand up again, but you didn’t do it again that night and haven’t done it again since. We did, however, immediately lower your crib to the bottom-most level!

I’ve heard that some babies don’t have the patience to sit and listen to their mommies and daddies read books to them. Lucky for us, you are happy to cuddle in our laps for story time–unless you don’t like our selection. Then you try to hit the book out of our hands! But when you’re engaged in the story, you even help us turn the pages. Somehow you know when we’ve come to the bottom of a page. How is that? You like to touch the pictures, and it almost looks like you are pointing to different objects, like the little mouse in “Goodnight Moon.”

Your toys have been spending less time in your mouth than in previous months. Without prompting, you drop the tumblers down the chute of your Fisher-Price Topsy Tumblers Drop ‘n Surprise Funhouse and the balls into the Tiny Love Musical Stack N Ball Elephant. It’s like you finally figured out how they work! You are beginning to sort and stack things, too, which your daddy, an engineer, finds particularly exciting.

My noisy baby, you find it funny when we use your pacifier or fingers to make silly mouth noises and have even started making them yourself! With some encouragement, you are also starting to clap in response to us clapping, and we cheer for you when you do it. Sometimes you appear to wave bye-bye or do a high-five, but you aren’t consistent. Oh, and your daddy and I have decided that “mama” is your first word because you say it the most clearly and most frequently in context. Lucky me!

Your monthly stats are nearly identical to last month’s: You wake up between 6:30-7am and nurse then eat breakfast 30-45 minutes later. You’ll usually have a banana, some Cheerios and drinkable yogurt. You go down for your first nap around 9:30am, and sometimes I’ll nurse you before I put you in your crib. You’ve been more eager to breastfeed than you were last month. Lunch happens around 11:30-12, and I’ll either nurse you before you eat or before your afternoon nap. I try to put you back down around 2-2:30pm, and hope that you’ll fall asleep by 3pm. You sleep for an hour or 1.5 hour, and dinner is around 5:30pm. Finally, you nurse before going to bed at 7-7:30pm. And you’re still in size 3 diapers and size 6-12 clothing.

We’re in the homestretch to the one year mark, baby guy! I love you so much!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

{photo taken on his 11-month birthday, June 12, 2012}