Dear Graham,
These past few weeks have been especially fun with you, as it seems like your little personality is making itself more and more known. We can literally watch your thoughts progress through your facial expressions as you start to understand more and more of the world around you.
Part of this new development is the fact that you moved up one class at school and are surrounded by other kids your age or older instead of littler babies. Within just a few weeks time, you began feeding yourself, scooting everywhere you want to go (you haven’t quite figured out the crawling motion, but that doesn’t stop you from being mobile), wanting to "walk" constantly while holding mommy or daddy's hands, and becoming more vocally expressive. This includes now saying “mamma”, which I’ve only been trying to get you to say since you were born. While you don’t necessarily say it when looking at me, I have no doubt you know exactly who you’re talking about and the resulting positive attention you receive each time you say it.
We spent several weekends in June visiting family, which meant another two plane trips. As much as I love your daily new developments, I have to say I miss the tiny infant who used to just lay on my lap as I bounced him during flights. Nothing on the airplane is safe if it’s within your striking distance and on a recent trip you learned the window shade goes up and down. And up and down. And that a particularly well lubricated window shade will go down so quickly that you will slam your own finger in it and then proceed to cry while looking at me helplessly. Dude, you’re the one who was playing the game…and the one who goes right back to it immediately after calming down. One of our trips was to Florida for your Grandad and Grand-Gale’s wedding. We stayed in a condo on the beach while in Florida and while you liked your limited time at the beach earlier this year, this time you were not a fan. At all. The water was fine, but you despised the sand. You would sit there with “jazz hands” in the air to ensure your little hands didn’t touch a grain of sand. And god bless all those who were around you when your hand did touch sand.
You see, with the aforementioned recent development has also come your ability to display emotion on a larger scale. And it’s adorable when you’re happy or excited, with your arms and legs pumping with excitement. It’s not so adorable when you’re doing something you don’t want to do. I didn’t know this before having you, but apparently shaking your quenched fists in the air is not a learned response to anger, but is somehow something you’re born knowing how to do. And boy did you shake those fists in the air if they got sand on them. Needless to say we spent a lot of time at the pool, which you loved. (See note above about adorable baby.)
Also during the last several weeks you have started eating turkey and beef. While this is a bit later than normal, it’s all due to your reaction to chicken, which I realized I haven’t told you about. When you turned eight months old and were able to have meats, I prepared pureed chicken breasts for you. While this has to be one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever made in our kitchen, I had made all of your baby food to date and liked being able to select hormone free chicken to serve you. This occasion was filled with pomp and circumstance as your daddy, the-man-who-would-rather-die-than-be-a-vegetarian, couldn’t wait to feed you meat. You took the first bite, and then a second and then gagged on a third. When I told your daddy that was enough for one night, he said we’d try one more bite. And try we did. And then you threw up that bite and all preceding bites on mommy. While daddy laughed.
So, we postponed the chicken a bit and I tried again a few weeks later. This time you ate most of the chicken, although it wasn’t your favorite. That night when we were going to bed, I looked at the monitor and saw you sleeping in throw up. When we went in to you, you again threw up and continued on several more times. The next day at school you threw up once too, so at that point I assumed you had a stomach bug and it wasn’t related to the chicken. (Sometimes I think when you become a mom, you give up a few IQ points.) However, later that week I gave in and bought prepared chicken baby food that was mixed with sweet potatoes. And you loved it. So I continued to feed you bite after bite until the jar was gone. (Again, those IQ points…) And later that night you threw up all over. Again.
A call to the pediatrician later, he said he’d never heard of anyone with a chicken allergy, but to go on a meat hiatus for a few weeks and then try turkey and other meats. So that’s what we did, although a bit timidly. The good news is you have no trouble with turkey or ground beef. The bad news is I have no idea when your daddy and I will be brave enough to try chicken with you again. I know we’ll have to do it again someday, because you really can’t live your life properly without knowing the wonderfulness that is Chick-Fil-A.
Love,
Mommy
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