Letter to Lucia: 11 Months

Dear Little One,

Eleven months! Nearly a year! And even in the past month you’ve grown so much, leaving behind so many of your baby ways and becoming more person-like, more toddler-like, every day. For some reason I always felt I’d be sorry to see your infancy come to an end—but I see now I was crazy. You are—and I say this objectively—cuter every day. You are smiling all the time now, great grins, with your four tiny bottom teeth making you look like a little jack-o-lantern. Your laughing has escalated; now you spend good bits of time simply laughing big belly laughs—“Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha”—for no reason; it’s impossible not to join in, and we laugh together. You laugh hysterically, too, usually around Daddy, squealing and giggling when he makes funny faces and movements. You are, more often than not, joyful.

But you are also a handful, especially now that you are mobile—and fast. You crawl only on your hands and knees now; the inchworming is completely gone. You crawl with abandon, your palms slapping loudly on the ground as you make your way around the apartment. Last week I hurried to the bedroom to get something, thinking I was leaving you occupied in the living room, but then I heard you—slap, slap—as you peeked your head around the doorway. And you love to stand. You’ve gone from struggling to pull yourself up on the Moroccon ottoman to pulling yourself up on everything and everything, even standing one-handed now, sure of yourself, thrilled. But you seem to prefer standing in the most dangerous places possible—like right at the sharp corner of the coffee table, or on the wine rack (which is going to go into the closet soon; sorry, dear). So I cannot let you out of my sight.

You are fully aware of your culinary desires now, demanding specifically what you want—usually puffs or cantaloupe—and angrily swiping away any of my incorrect guesses. (You can accurately identify a piece of your beloved cantaloupe among mangos and carrots; you cannot be fooled.) Mealtimes leave the area around your high chair—and the walls—a Pollack-like masterpiece of flung cereal and soup and bits of food. Last week I stepped with a bare foot on a glob of refried beans. That was charming. At those moments, as well as when you’re yelling at the top of your lungs, demanding who knows what—I tell myself that these baby days are but a small part of my life with you, that soon I may even look back on them fondly. I try to tell myself what helpful strangers so often advise—“Enjoy her!”—even when there’s soupy spinach dangling from the window frame, even when your sticky, banana-y hand firmly grabs my cheek.

It helps that the world outside our door is vibrant, bustling, full of things to see and do. We are frequent playground-goers now, and we have ventured to the Tot Lot in Prospect Park several times. You are both captivated and frightened by the other creeping babies scaling the slide and pulling up on the metal bars, and you stay close to me, sometimes clinging so tightly to my arms it hurts. But you have started acclimating, and recently even scaled the slide yourself—something I was sure only older, bigger, rougher babies did. But no—after watching for a long time, you crawled over; and with my protective hand ready to stop you from slipping backwards, up you went.

The playgrounds are fun for you; but I also like going just to see other parents—and perhaps catch a glimpse of one weary and frustrated, just to remind myself on a hard day that it’s not just you, and it’s not just me, that this is all part of the parenting thing. I saw a father recently holding his son, not much older than you, who was wielding a rubber turkey baster. “Couldn’t leave home without the turkey baster,” he muttered wearily to me as he passed. It was no later than 8:30am. I still think of him when the days seem long. Somewhere, not too far away, days are long for other parents, too.

Don’t misunderstand: there is much fun and wonder and snuggling and laughing, by baby and by Mama. You are pointing now—sometimes at specific things, sometimes at nothing, sometimes simply holding out your finger to meet mine, ET- or Sistene Chapel-style. Yesterday at the playground, you looked up at an airplane going by, and I told you to point at the plane—and you did, firmly and clearly. You love “reading” the newspaper, whipping the sections apart, staining your little fingers with newsprint. You love magazines—so easily torn and rustled through. You love Bunny’s Noisy Book by Margaret Wise Brown (you make the noise of a bunny munching a leaf, and you scratch a pillow when the bunny scratches), Puppy and Friends, and A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni. You love travel-sized bottles of shampoo, and Tupperware, and belts, and Daddy’s hats, all so much more interesting than any baby-intended toys.

You love a lot of things. But not as much as we love you.