Dear M,

You turned eleven months old the other day, and Mama has finally arrived. The word, that is. I don’t yet know if you’re aware that it means me, but it doesn’t matter. When you say it, my pulse quickens and the corners of my mouth curve upward involuntarily. I find myself trying to coax that magic syllable from your lips over and over, as if it had the power to cure all the world’s troubles.

I am almost certain now that you will have your father’s hair. Delicate curls perch atop your ears, and when I run my hand up the back of your head, it leaves a trail of whorls and curlicues in its wake. When it comes to the straight vs. curly debate, it seems that the grass is always greener on the other side, and thus, long before your father and I decided to start a family, I had dreams of a daughter with golden curls. As your naturally-straight-haired mama who pays good money for her curls, I hope you will always love your hair.

But you are going to have my eyes – eyes that reveal feathery layers of gold and green to those who are willing to look close enough. I discovered by accident one day that when my eyes are in direct sunlight or filled with tears, they turn a brilliant green. I hope it is always the sun that makes your eyes shine green.

You have been making a new face lately that your father has affectionately dubbed “monkey face”. Thankfully, it is not accompanied by the hoots and howls of our simian cousins. At least not yet.

Although you still love to blow raspberries, you have mostly set them aside in favor of a new sound – it’s sort of like trilling your tongue, except somehow you do it in your cheek. With spit. Despite my best efforts, I cannot duplicate it, and must content myself with listening to you perform your own private symphony as you go about your business.

You are walking with more confidence every day, first taking one or two steps, now five or six, before deciding you have had enough, and lowering to all fours to race off to your destination. You also pull to a stand, bend over, and lower your head to the floor. I can only dream of that kind of flexibility.

You are not saying any words yet, but your babbling has taken on a conversational quality. In fact, I’m fairly certain you’re talking in complete sentences. Just not in any language I can understand.

When I get you from your crib in the morning or after naps, you hold the rail, bounce your legs, and shriek with excitement. I know you love me, but it makes me feel all warm and squishy inside to see just how much.

This bouncing has spilled over into other venues, including when I try to carry you around. You kick your legs and bob your head, flexing your body about my arm as it grips you tightly to me. And you have finally discovered that you can bounce in your jumper, and also make it swing. You will walk forward a foot or two, then lift your feet and smile crazily as you sway back and forth.

Nursing continues to hold its own set of surprises. I’ve seen you make the milk sign, but not always when you’re hungry, so it could just be you opening and closing your hands. I know it will come. Patience. There’s still lots of wiggling and switching of sides, so much so that you are often not latched on when I have my letdown. For as long as I can remember, I’ve mumbled “milk’s here” when it arrives, and it dawned on me the other day that you know what that means. You will stop whatever you’re doing, throw yourself sideways, and greedily gulp down the liquid gold. And finally, you have discovered that you can lift my shirt, and seem to find great pleasure in doing so – even when you’re not hungry. Let the public peep shows begin.

Your obsession with the cats continues but, whereas they used to let you tug on their ears and whiskers, and remove the occasional fistful of fur, they now won’t even stand for being in the same room. I don’t even think it’s the physicality of your excitement that scares them. It’s the top-of-your-lungs screeching that sends them skittering for cover. So for now, it remains a somewhat one-sided love affair.

You find small amounts of solace in Goodnight Moon, though, giggling every time you see the kitties on the page, poking them with your finger, and giving them wet kisses with your mouth.

And you are becoming increasingly aware of the other animals in your life. We live in a quiet, wooded area, and see everything from deer, fox and coyote, to bunnies, squirrels and woodchucks. I catch you staring out the window, watching them with curiosity. I’m fairly certain that they all fall into the following categories: kitty, small kitty, big kitty, and really big kitty.

You have finally decided that food is for you, and if I plan on eating, I better have something on my plate I can share with you. You eat avocado, bananas, strawberries, cherries, avocado, mangoes, carrots, prunes, avocado, peas, plums, pears, avocado, chicken, melon, avocado, avocado and avocado. In fact, you’ll eat at least a small amount of just about anything I put in front of you. But the whining begins if I don’t get the avocado in your hands fast enough. You eschew delicate bites, choosing instead to shove huge chunks into your mouth, patiently mashing it to a delicious paste with your tongue. And you’ll even eat lemons, although we learned the hard way that they don’t mix well with eye-rubbings. The surprised cry of shock and pain you let out led to a hasty removal of the lemon slice and rubbing down of the hands.

Sleeping is typically going well these days, and with the introduction of a fairly sizeable dinner of solid food, you often go ten or more hours between nursing at night. This sounds fantastic, but in fact, I am still getting up at least once a night to nurse you. This happens because you frequently refuse to nurse before bed, so that ten hour stretch is from, say, 5 PM to 3 AM.

All in all, the sleeping thing would be going fairly well, however, if it weren’t for my insomnia. I’ve struggled with it off and on for all of my adult life, and during bouts like this I have always turned to sleeping pills to get me through the sleepless weeks or months, knowing that it will eventually go away, and things will return to normal. But I don’t dare do that while nursing you, so I am left to spend hours in bed, mind churning, jaw clenched in frustration. I am probably averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night, and it is really taking its toll. At this point I’m just hunkering down and waiting for the end. I know it will come. Eventually.

Sometimes, during those sleepless nights, I see the future stretching out in front of us. I think about you walking and running, riding a bike, flying a kite, jumping on a trampoline. I think of your teen years and wonder if you’ll shut me out completely, or let me in a little. I think of dating and late nights and worry, and then college, adulthood, career, marriage, children, and not having you in my everyday life anymore. I used to hear about the “empty nest syndrome” and wonder what the big deal was. I always thought parents would be thrilled to return to their childless days, to do what they wanted when they wanted, travel, sleep in, not have to worry all the time. But I failed to realize how foolish it was to think that one could become “childless” again, and that perhaps, one might truly mourn the loss of that physical presence, the daily contact with this person who you love more than life itself.

That future is far away now, although I hear it whispering in distant corners, gathering speed, heading our way. Every day brings it closer, and I see small signs already, in your growing independence, in the way that we are no longer a single unit, operating as one. I watch you walking away from me, and feel so excited about the coming years, but I know they come with a price – that eventually, I will lose you. Of course, I will still be in your life, and I hope with all my heart that we will remain close when you are an adult. But, although that will come with its own rewards, it won’t be the same. You won’t be my little baby anymore.

But it is a reality, and one I must resign myself to. So I try to cherish each moment we have together, to inscribe your eleven-month-old face in my memory, remember each motion of your hands and silly face you make, record every coo and babble. It is an impossibility, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. I need all of this, so that when you’re grown and gone, I can remember how amazing it was to have you for every minute of every day.

Love,
Mama