July 5, 2007: Nine Months Old

I curled up against you in bed last week and found myself spooning a child whose legs reached down to my knees. Before, when people said, “They grow up so quickly,” I just shook my head in exhausted incredulity. Most days seem to stretch on forever, each of your squeals and meals an event. But then you are playing under the dining table, and when you stand, you cry out in frustration. You are stuck. Stuck, because almost overnight, you have grown so tall, your head now reaches under the lip of the table. In an instant, the infant you has transformed into a little boy.

Even though the monstrous molars pushing through have commanded a great deal of our energy this month, you are still streaking ahead in your development. Toby asked me recently, “When do you think Eliot will start walking? He has been at this stage for so long.” But what, exactly, is this stage? You have been pulling up and furniture surfing for over a month, sure, but I see such a difference between the steady, balancing posture you have today versus the wobbling of a month ago. You know how to hold on with a firm grip to the side of the bathtub before reaching, legs spread wide and fingers splayed, for the block that has tumbled to the bathroom floor. You are growing firmer on the earth, and steadier still as you move up and away from it.

Your eager exploration of each and every new part of your world has only grown in scope and intensity. Nothing is beyond the reach of your curiosity. A yellow leaf in the green grass is an astounding discovery. You stroke it with your fingertips, test in on your tongue, squash it in your fist, and rub it back and forth on the ground. A stone, a windowpane, a handful of someone’s hair.

When you are busy in a corner of the living room swinging the pages of a board book back and forth, I try, as quietly as I can, to sneak open the refrigerator to pull out the makings for lunch. No luck. The faintest squeak of the seal breaking as the door opens grabs your attention. With a shriek and a grin, you are off, your hands and knees slapping merrily on the floor as you rush over to see what’s in store for you. If I close the door in the seconds before you arrive, you sit back on your rump and dissolve into red-faced tears. But occasionally, I give in. And you pull up on the cool shelves of the fridge, your face lit with the glory of the newness displayed before you. Oh, the forbidden fruits! Your arms reach wide as if you are a great composer erect before his orchestra. The symphony of color, texture, and cool mist stand at the ready for your command. And it begins. A crinkle of cellophane around the flour tortillas, a tap of the yogurt container on the shelf. A rising crescendo of soda cans turned on their sides, a great swell of crashing Tupperware on the kitchen floor. And, of course, the grand finale: your protesting howls as I pull you away and close the door.

Finding ways to direct your attention to baby-friendlier activities is the endless game occupying our days. The dog is guaranteed to elicit smiles from you, although poor Fenway has had just about enough of your fur-pulling. When she is inside with us, you chase her from one comfy spot in the living room to another while she looks up at me with beseeching eyes. We have taken to trapping the two of you on either side of the baby gate. With you at the top of the stairs and the pooch anywhere she pleases down below, she can come within range of your grabby hands at her own leisure. You often stand at the baby gate, squealing and stomping and reaching, in the hopes she will venture up and entertain you. When I am not looking, I sometimes find she has crept to the top of the stairs and is licking your hands and face with great vigor (an activity expressly forbidden in the presence of mommy and daddy) while you giggle and shriek, your face squinched up with delight.  

In mellower moments, we read. I am amused and amazed by which of the heaps of books you are drawn to. During your first few months, the only book you actually sat and looked at as I read it was some used-bookstore find on trucks. “So many trucks, what kinds do we see? One holds oil, one holds mail, and a van delivers things for sale!” You are most captivated by dinosaurs, tractors, the loud animal noises we make when we read Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? Oh, we have a boy, for sure, I thought. You could not make it through The Runaway Bunny even if we read it to you while you yawned your glazed way to sleep.

But then something funny happened. I found a used copy of some book on baby animals, circa 1956 or so. In it, blue-eyed cherubs in pinafores and Mary Janes hug fuzzy baby chicks and wobbly colts. And you are completely mesmerized by this book. It does not matter what else we are doing in our day. Once I open that book, your wriggling stops and you sit still silence as I turn each page. What is it about this story, about these puff-ball kittens with the ribbons around their necks? Who could ever guess or know what would draw you in? So, we keep an array of books scattered all over the house for you, rotating them from room to room. Because as much as I know you and you know me, you are still a mystery developing in ways I cannot predict. As your legs and arms grow longer and lankier, stretching out beyond the reach of me, so does your mind and your secret ways. You find little worlds of your own in unexpected places, and those are the worlds in which you become who you are.