Month 10 or, Waiting for the Excitement

Dear Miriam,

I put off writing to you this month because I was hoping that something exciting would happen.  We were supposed to go down to Madison and have a second Christmas with the Thorne side of the family, but we all got sick, so we didn't go.  Which means that I don't have much to tell you about this month.

You had your next check up.  You lost a little weight, which the doctor wasn't thrilled about, so you have to go back and get weighed again in a few weeks.  You had some fluid in your left ear, but it didn't seem to be a problem.  Otherwise, the doctor found you a normal, healthy baby.  It helped that you demonstrated all of your tricks.  You smiled, and stood up, and babbled.  You even waved to her, which she said we could claim as knowing a word on the development tracking worksheet.  You didn't even have to have any shots this time.  It was a quick and easy visit.

Then you spent the next few days with a fever and stuffed up nose.  Of course.

In the interest of fattening you back up, we introduced you to cheese and yogurt, both of which you've liked.  Tonight you yelled and waved your arms until I got the yogurt out of the fridge.  Then you were all smiles.  You've started wanting to eat whatever I'm eating.  So I end up with slices of peach and cheese and banana on my plate, while you end up with bites of fried chicken and tater tot casserole on your tray.  It all works out.

Last month, I wrote about how you've started choosing to play with books.  This month I had to tape one back together after you loved it nearly to death.  Then the other day I realized that I had accidentally taped the last two pages together.  So now those poor peek-a-boo babies have a cliffhanger ending.  How suspenseful!

We did manage to do your sleep training this month, so your bedtime is easier now, when you're not miserable with a stuffed up head.  Those couple of nights, I let you fall asleep on my shoulder, just to keep you upright for a while.  But otherwise you've started being able to get yourself to sleep, and even get back to sleep when you wake up at night.  One night, you actually slept all the way through.  I guess that was our excitement for the month, now that I think about it.

I was in a meeting at work today about how people from different generations have different expectations from work and from life.  Your grandparents are all from a generation that valued working hard, saving their money, being loyal to an employer (because jobs were often scarce) and that saw teamwork as the way life would improve.  Your father and I (and your aunts and uncles) are from a generation that is much more cynical, that expects to have to do things on our own, and that views having a job as something necessary but not always rewarding.  It makes me very curious to see what social and political changes will affect your generation, and how you will reflect those influences in your own unique ways.  I hope that you will seek out people from other generations, both older and eventually younger than yourself.  It is always valuable to have an insight into how someone else views the world around you, if only so that you know the best way to talk them into letting you borrow the car.

Love,
Mom

3.11 or, Not the Post You Were Looking For

Dear Corbin,

This month, I was supposed to be writing a post about how lovely it was to see the Thorne side of the family for a Second Christmas in Madison.  Instead, I can write about how lovely the staff at Children's ER was (again) when they treated your fever of 105 and your double ear infection.

We had been having a pretty nice month.  It was cold here, of course.  School started again, which actually was the source of some tension.  We had been feeling for a couple of months now that you just weren't as happy in this class with this teacher.  You told us more often that you didn't want to go, and we noticed you picking up some words and play ideas that we didn't like.  I went so far as to mention to the director that we might want to move you to a different class.  But then I volunteered to help with an Open House event and ended up having wonderful conversations with both of your teachers, the director and the former director.  They all mentioned how much better that whole class is getting along.  One student left, and there were two new students, so the personalities were getting along much better.  Your teacher mentioned that she especially noticed that your attention span was really improved, and that you seemed much more interested in learning new activities.  The really fun part was that you had been showing one of the new kids some of the materials, which they thought was great.  So school seemed to be going well, and then you missed almost a whole week because of that fever.  It seems like just when we get into a routine, we get sick again.

Dad had an ear infection, too, for the first time since he was a kid.  He suffered from them a lot when he was young.  So did Uncle Alex.  I really hope that this is not the start of chronic ear infections for you.  We know several kids who have gone through a ton of ear infections and ended up with tubes in their ears.  I'm hoping to avoid all that.

You and I did get to have a really fun Saturday with Adrian and Cindy, though, at an indoor playground in Edina.  They had a huge climbing structure, with slides and tubes and look-out windows at the top.  They had a gym, too, with a bouncy house and lots of wheeled toys to ride on.  You worked up quite a sweat, even though I didn't dress you very warmly, and you drank about half a bottle of water while we were there.  It was a lot of fun to watch you playing and have the chance to chat with Cindy.  Then both of us spent time climbing around with you guys.  I imagine we'll go back there again.

I've been exploring your Theory of Mind lately.  The Theory of Mind is being able to understand that other people feel differently than you do, and have different information than you do.  So I've been testing you lately to see if your brain has made that leap.  If you ever needed proof that your Mom is kind of dorky, there it is.

One of the other conversations that we've been having these days is about feeling more than one feeling at a time.  That we can love someone even when we're angry with them, or disagree with them.  I think it's important to teach you that.  You should always remember it, because there will never be a time that we don't love you.  No matter how angry, not matter how much we disagree, we will always love you.

Love,
Mom

Month 9 or, Your First Christmas

Dear Miriam,

You celebrated your first Christmas and New Year's in true Miriam style: wanting to do what everyone else is doing.  You will follow someone and hang on to their pants until they pick you up, and you crawl pretty fast, now, so you're good at cornering us.  You especially love to play with whatever Corbin is playing with, which is sometimes fine and sometimes not.  I'll try to distract you with a different toy, but sometimes that backfires when Corbin gets distracted, too.

This month, you learned how to feed yourself Cheerios, and now you refuse to eat anything that you have not put into your own mouth.  If I come toward you with a spoon, you immediately start flailing your arms around.  It's a pretty effective defense; your baby-fu is strong.  I would be happier about this development if I hadn't just made you 38 gallons of pureed vegetables.  So I've been scrounging around to find finger foods for you until I can switch meal gears for you.

You have two teeth now.  You're still pulling up on everything, but I've also seen you stand on your own for a moment, too.  I've also watched you climb up onto a box of books to get at the television remote.  I have a feeling that you're going to be a determined kind of kid.  Fortunately, you're also a happy kid.  You like to play peek-a-boo, and get tickled, and we always get big smiles when you see us.  You have a funny laugh, kind of a burble-y giggle, and also this strange inhaling whistle-moan that always makes us laugh.  You're hard to hold on to sometimes.  When you get excited, you try to bounce up and down, and you're liable to head-butt whoever is holding you.  When you see something that you're interested in, you'll just lean toward it all of a sudden.  If there's ever a story that ends with you getting dropped on your head, it will be because of that.

There are things that make you grumpy, of course.  You don't like laying down to be changed, and you don't like being in your car seat, and you don't like being in your high chair.  Your first reaction to any of those is to arch your back and cry.  So we have to spend a couple of minutes distracting you somehow before you'll relax.

You are also figuring out how books work.  You like that they open and close, but sometimes you close them and then get this confused look on your face as if that's not what you expected.  We have a couple of lift-the-flap books that you are getting pretty familiar with, but you're not as into the touch-and-feel books yet.  It's nice to see you choose a book to play with, though.

We had a good month, this month.  Obviously there was a lot happening.  We went to the Children's Museum, and you had fun watching all of the activity going on around you.  When Adrian and Annika came over, you had fun palling around with Ani.  It was your first big snowfall and your first holidays.

I haven't written very much to you in the last couple of blogs.  I've been thinking about why that might be.  Sometimes when I'm writing to you, I think about how you're the last baby that we're planning on having, and so a lot of these milestones are the last time we're going to experience them.  Yours is the last Baby's First Christmas or Baby's First Tooth.  You're the last baby that I'll watch learn to sit up and then crawl and then stand.  You're the last baby that I'll nurse.  I'm already planning which friends I will give away your clothes to, and all of the baby gear that you will outgrow soon.  So even though I love watching you learn and grow, I know that pretty soon baby time, with all of it's joys and frustrations, will be over.  It's a little bit sad and so I've been avoiding talking about it.  But I don't want you to feel as though we haven't been paying attention, so I promise to write more from now on.

Love,
Mom

PS: See what I did, there?

 

 

 

 

 

3.10 or, Christmas at the Big House

Dear Corbin,

You told me that you wanted to be a pirate for Christmas this year.  I had to tell you that it wasn't that kind of holiday.

We had Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Lam's big house in Madison.  Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena were with us this year, which was nice.  Uncle Alex played Legos with you for a long time one day, and Aunt Lena gave you an amazing hand-drawn coloring book.  She even made mazes for you.  It's very cool.  Your favorite present, though, was a little light-up airplane.  You liked it so much you took it to bed with you for the rest of the week.

We had a really good month before Christmas as well.  You and Dad spent some time in the garage making higher supports for your wooden train tracks, so that you could build, "elevator trains."  We went to the Children's Museum with the Stauffers, and you had so much fun playing with Adrian that you invited him over the next weekend, too.  It was really fun to watch you two play.  You don't have the attention span yet to really sit down and do an activity together, like build a train track or play a game, so the house was eventually covered ankle-deep in all kinds of toys.  Hopefully this summer we'll be able to get together with them and go up to the playground at the park.  Dad and I came to observe in your classroom, and you spent the whole time drawing pictures of volcanoes and showing them to us.  It made me laugh because you do the same thing at home all the time.  Why do we send you to preschool again?

We got our first big snowfall of the winter, about 10" as measured by me standing inside and looking at our picnic table.  You had fun helping Dad shovel a couple of times.  Then you tried to build a snowman, but the snowballs got too big, so you built a snow horse instead.  It was pretty cool.  Aunt Cele came over to help Grandma for a couple of days while Grandpa went to Arizona to visit with Aunt Irene and Cousin Sharon.  She brought all kinds of crafty projects that she and Aunt Alice put together for you to do.

We went to a pancake breakfast at church and you got to watch a magic show and then get a present from Saint Nick. You thought the magic show was pretty great, especially since you got to help out with one of the tricks.  It was a pretty good show, and you even got to pet the bunny afterward.  When Saint Nick came out to hand out presents, you were excited of course.  There were about 30 children waiting, and you were the very last child to get his present.  Grandma and I were getting more and more anxious that there wouldn't be a present for you, that you would have been forgotten somehow, so when Saint Nick called your name, both of us were very relieved.

While we were in Madison, Grandma kept saying things like, "This might be our last Christmas at this house."  She made Uncle Alex and I go through things that we'd saved from our teenage years, which was kind of fun.  I found a stash of old photographs which will embarrass all of my high school friends.  You and I took two boxes of books to Half Price Books and come home with a new picture book and a new Madeline movie.  It's good to get rid of things that we don't need--our ultimate satisfaction in life should not rest on the things that we own.  There will always be special things that we want to keep, that hold memories and feelings, but the majority of our possessions are really only here for our convenience.  And in many cases, they would be more useful to someone else instead of hanging around our house.  It's especially good to remember that at Christmas, which has become in many ways about stuff instead of people.  We all love to give and receive gifts, but we have to remember the most important part about Christmas: spending time with loved ones and beating them at Scrabble.

Love,
Mom