Cognosco

Dear Mr. Scientist,

You are becoming quite the little experimenter around the house. You have learned to turn toys (or whatever) in your hands so that you can inspect a given object from all angles, as well as make sure to taste all of its surfaces. You have been conducting all sorts of experiments with any object you can get your hands on.

If I bang it on this surface, will it make noise?

If I bang it together with this other thing, is the noise different?

If I drop it, what happens?

What happens if I throw it?

What happens if I smash it?

Does it roll or slide?

Will it fit through the bars of my crib?

Will it fit through the bars of the gate?

Will it fit inside this other thing?

     And most importantly…

Can I eat it?

 

On day, you were playing with your tigger, and you were particularly fascinated with his tag. This is nothing new—you’ve been fascinated with tags for about 6 weeks. You were sitting on the bed while I was getting dressed from a shower. I put the towel on the bed, and the tag happened to be near you. You picked up the towel by the tag, and holding that tag in your left hand and the tiggy tag in the right hand, you inspected an compared them simultaneously for quite some time. You seemed perplexed that the tags were the same, but what they were connected to was so different. It was a really fantastic moment for me to witness. It just highlighted how amazing the human brain really is.

It has really been a joy to watch you over the last few weeks since your last developmental leap, so accurately predicted by the Wonder Weeks. Gearing up for that leap, you were kind of a pain. You wanted to be picked up, no not picked up. Carried. No, not carried. Inside. No, outside. In short, nothing made you happy for about 10 days. You were fussy about everything and so clingy. No, not clingy.

And then, just like with the other leaps, it seemed like overnight, you were a whole new baby. You’ve been content to play by yourself for longer stretches of time as you try to figure out the what and how of pretty much everything. This includes playing by yourself in your crib in the middle of the night, which is a new thing completely. One day, when you didn’t know I was watching you (I was pretending to be asleep), I watched you fit every toy from your crib through the slats, wave it up and down, and pull it back through. Then you dropped every toy over the top bar and watched it fall. Of course, once they were all out, you cried. But I was proud of your experimentation and didn’t mind getting them all together for you again.

A few days ago, you were sitting on your little toilet seat naked. You discovered your penis. You had started to discover it right before the surgery, and then stopped touching it altogether afterwards. I had begun to be afraid that we had totally scarred you for life. Apparently, it doesn’t hurt at all anymore, because you discovered it for quite some time that day. We were elated.  Then you touched your bellybutton hernia, and then your penis, and then your hernia. You realized that the hernia wasn’t as entertaining fairly quickly. A very productive experiment.

You also recently disovered that you can put your foot in your mouth, and for about two days, this is all you wanted to do in your car seat. Which is quite the feat since you can’t lean forward to meet it. You would bring your foot to your mouth with two hands and put it in your mouth as if it were a footie hamburger. Your daddy and I laughed hysterically at that.

With regards to your musical and auditory world, you have been fascinated with our Tibetan singing bowls. You don’t have the dexterity to actually use them as they are intended, but enjoy banging them or hearing me bang them. The harmonics that result from just hitting the bowl are pretty cool, so I don’t mind. You are also fascinated by the sounds the wooden blocks you were recently gifted make when banged together. Or banged on the Tibetan bowl. And you will sit, riveted, through a “Wheels on the Bus” song on the Baby Einstein On the Go DVD, while it plays over and over. It’s actually quite cute, because it’s a little segment where all the puppets are grooving on a cartoon bus, and I was riveted myself. I can set the DVD on loop, and you will watch and listen to that for about 10 times before you tire of it. The rest of the DVD hasn’t particularly captured your interest (fine by me), but that particular segment has proved useful for the times that I really need to get a shower and get dressed so we can get out of the house.

Oh, and your first tooth FINALLY started to poke through on November 6. I had really started to think that you just didn’t have any teeth in there, and then pop! there it was. You have started to actually chew (or rather, gum) your food in the last few weeks rather than just swallowing it whole. I’m pretty excited about this because it opens up your food options considerably.

You got to play with your first balloon this month when Mamma came through town. We tied a helium balloon to your wrist while we were at a restaurant. That was a really awesome to watch. You also discovered bubbles, which didn’t impress you the first time, but totally captured your attention the second time.

  

You also finally met your Grandma-Great Klein at the end of last month. I forgot to mention that in your last update. You are named after her husband, Albert, who passed away a few years ago (as well as your Uncle Frank, whose middle name was Albert, because he was named after his grandpa…).

I got a little lazy about our morning walks, but then I discovered a few really great parks that have water and a lot of birds. You love birds and I love water, and so we’ve gone walking every morning 8 out of the last 10 days. It’s a really nice, calming part of our day now. 

We started sleep training a week ago, and it has really gone well. You now go to sleep within about 10 minutes with no crying. You are waking less at night, and the few times that you have been awake for long periods of time in the middle of the night, you have been reasonably content to play in your crib until you settle back down to sleep. You will occasionally fuss, and I will get up and lay you down and tell you it’s not time to get up yet, but you don’t throw a fit and it’s fun to listen to you play while I’m half asleep. You are also sleeping later. We have decided that you may not get up before 6, but we won’t let you sleep past 7. So if you wake up at 5:20, we tell you it’s time to go back to sleep. This presents a challenge, because if you are still awake at 6, and now it’s suddenly time to get up, this could be confusing. So, when that time comes, we say cheerfully “it’s time to get up” and turn on the light. The light is what’s known as a discriminative stimulus. If the light is off, you can’t get up yet. If the light is on, you can. Other people use alarm clocks for the same purpose, but I hate alarm clocks so that’s not happening. If you fall back to sleep before 6 rolls around, we let you sleep until the next time you wake, or 7 a.m. Whichever comes first. It’s a little harder to get you down for naps, but still fairly easy compared to our prior "system" (or lack thereof). In short, we have had success thus far. 

You are incredibly communicative, and play with the whole range of consonants and syllables. I expect you to just bust out with words at any time. There have been several times when you have crawled towards me and said something resembling “mama”, but I’m really not sure if it’s a coincidence. I love to hear you babble, and you still smile and laugh easily, even on your cranky days. 

You are cruising a lot now, and took one or two stumbling steps today between your Nanna and Daddy. You are now able to stand for seconds at a time before you fall over. I can’t believe it.

So, my little magical child, today marks 9 months since you were born. You have now been on the outside of me for as long as you were on the inside of me. This is another one of those math and time things that kind of freaks me out. You are growing so fast…

Things I have learned this month:

• Time is relentless.
• Everyone has boundaries and limits. You may not know where they are, but you will know when they have been crossed.
• Being a good mother is dependent on acknowledging these limits.
• Behaviorism principles really work. I already knew this, but it’s always nice to learn again.
• Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing. But it is still worth it.
• Any "method" used for anything with your child can (and should) be tweaked to suit your child.
• Piaget was right. Humans are driven to learn and explore.
• Sleep is a priority. Period.
• If teething drool could be harnessed as an energy source, the oil companies would be bankrupt.
• Chewing does not require teeth.
• There is a significant difference between the pain level associated with toothless gums chomping down on your nipple and a new tooth chomping down your nipple.
• Without motherhood amnesia, we would have never survived as a species.
• It’s all worth it. Really.

Love, 

Mama