Letter to Lucia: 13 Months

Dear Little One,

You’re over a year old now, considered, I believe, a toddler and not a baby. Phooey. You are still a baby, a dear one, a trying one, an adorable one, getting cuter and funnier every day. But as you are not actually yet “toddling,” and since you seem to be demonstrating absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, I will continue to see you as a baby.

You are very nearly weaned. We are down to about once a day—sometimes twice, but usually once. You are sleeping consistently through the night, from 7:30 to 7 or 7:30. This is blissful. I credit California; being here in unfamiliar surroundings helped break some of the breastfeeding associations, making weaning easier, and it was surprisingly painless to cut out the middle-of-the-night feeding. A week or so of Daddy coming to you when you cried, giving you your pacifier, and singing to you for a little while, and soon you weren’t bothering to wake up at all.

Your cutest new trick is “cuddle cuddle cuddle.” You have several beloved stuffed animals, and you love to crawl up to them, grab one, and squeeze it, sometimes falling on top of it, and then handing it to me for a cuddle, too. “Oh, snuggling,” I always say. “Cuddle, cuddle, cuddle.” Now, whenever you see a picture of a teddy bear in a book, you draw your little arms into your chest as though you’re hugging something and twist back and forth a few times. Cutest thing ever.

You still love the playground—the great one we have just across the street where you’ve spent your thirteenth month—but what you love most are the fall leaves that are strewn around. I’m not sure what kind of tree they’re from, but they’re brightly colored and long-stemmed, and you love to just hold and study them, hand them to me and then take them back. Yesterday you were holding one by its stem and just drawing it gently across your face and neck. We also have a kind of tree all around our apartment complex that drops absolutely enormous leaves—dinner-plate-sized. These, too, you love to hold and carry, and sometimes by the end of the day after a few trips outside our coffee table, too, is covered with them. The manic leaf-blowing gardeners don’t work weekends, so lots of leaves can pile up.

You are taxing me with your eating. I’ve written about this already, but please, little one, give me a little break on this. Chasing you with a fork has been a less-fun part of this past month.

You are happy here in California, and this unexpected month away has spared us one more month of cold weather. You’re a California baby—you’ve never experienced a real winter—and it will be interesting to see what you think. Crawling around in your bare babyfeet is soon to be a thing of the past, at least until next summer.

You are barking whenever you see dogs, and pointing at them, but aside from Mama and Dada, you haven’t yet said much. You understand nearly everything, however, whether I ask you to get Blankie, Bear, Monkey, your spiny ball, or pretty much any other toy. You look around for a moment, then crawl over to the toy determinedly and hold it up in triumph before snuggling it or putting it into your mouth.

Current favorite foods: grapes, teething biscuits, wheat crackers.