Late as usual… pertains to this month’s newsletter, and all too often it’s the story of my life. I have high hopes for you that you’ll be more organized and punctual than I am; you got a good start by coming into the world a few days ahead of your due date. But I know that as your mama, I am only part of what shapes the person you are becoming. Some of who you are is built in, some is up to me and Dad, and some of it is the rest of the world.
So far, you’re quite the character already – you love me and your dad, and you show it by practically leaping out of other people’s arms to get one of us to hold you, but you also have an independent streak. Make that a wide, wide swath. Once you’ve been held and cuddled for a bit, you start squirming and pushing away from the shelter of loving arms, trying to win your freedom, to go exploring. You’re not crawling yet, but you seem almost ready. I’ve seen you raise yourself onto hands and knees, but once you’re up, you don’t know what to do next, so you look around, and then get back down on your tummy. You can roll with the greatest of ease, and pivot and creep around, so between one motion and another you manage to get into all kinds of places when my back is turned. One day I was in the kitchen making a bottle for you, and had placed you on your play mat. I came back to find that you were several feet away from the mat, gnawing on the leg of an end-table.
And it isn’t just exploring – you’re a thrillseeker as well. You love it when Daddy tosses you up in the air and catches you – whenever he does that, you grin from ear to ear and giggle. You love to be swung around, spun around, bounced around… anything that goes fast.
In Kira, you’ve found your first friend – if friendship means grabbing each other’s faces, sharing germs, babbling at each other, and crying in tandem. Now that she’s walking, she will probably set for you a whole new standard of how to find trouble.
When it comes to food, your lust for new experiences is somewhat tempered by the fact that, let’s face it, baby food from a jar is not especially delicious stuff. But your first food was rice cereal, and while I expected that your first taste of it would elicit a “yuck!” face and ejection of the offending substance… I was half right. Most of your first meal did end up on your shirt, but not from lack of enthusiasm on your part. You instantly fell in love with cereal, with the very idea of eating “real” food. I have video to prove it. You can’t resist grabbing the spoon and taking control, even though I suspect you have figured out that it’s not the most effective way to actually get food into your tummy. So far, your solid food repertoire consists of rice, oatmeal, peas, green beans, and sweet potatoes. You ate all of the above reasonably happily, but the green beans were definitely not your favorite. I have tasted all of the baby foods before I fed them to you, and I have to say I agree with you. The peas are tolerable, the sweet potatoes are good, but the green beans are pretty awful. You can’t win ‘em all.
Love,
Mama
