Dear Calvin,Another month has gone. Your dad and I talk often about how sad it is that you're growing so fast, and yet it's so exciting that you're developing such a fun and distinctive little personality. In the past month you've been very busy growing, moving, chatting, and learning. Here are a few of the things we love about you at the moment:
- For about six weeks you've had a tooth just under the surface, trying to break through. This week it finally did. You have four teeth on your top, and two on your bottom. All right in the front middle of your mouth.
- You hate, hate, HATE when I clean your nose.
- You are currently wearing a size 2T clothing, which means that you're about 10 months ahead of where you should be size-wise. You're growing WAY too fast.
- You love playing peek-a-boo. You laugh every time. But what's great is that YOU have started to play it with us. You'll cover your own eyes and wait until we say "peek a..." and then you'll hurry and uncover your eyes and laugh loudly when we yell "BOO!"
- You love being chased. Many times a day, you'll come out of nowhere, give me a mischievous look, and then turn and run. You'll laugh as we chase you, and even harder when we catch you. You melt my heart the times that you'll run from me for a minute, and then turn around suddenly, running back into my arms to give me a big hug.
- Your current favorite words are "Tada!" (after everything you do that you're impressed with), "Go", still "Apple", and you've even said "Hello" in the correct context half a dozen times.
- I love that no matter where you are in the house, as soon as I turn on the bath water, I can hear your little bare feet running as fast they can go towards the bathroom. You love bath time. You splash, stand up, push your boat around, stick your foam animals to the sides of the tub, and dump water from containers back and forth into each other.
- It's always interesting to try to figure out how much you really understand of what we're saying, but here are a few of the things that we know for sure you understand. "Hands up" either to put your tray on, or to undress you for bath time; "Downstairs" - when we say it, you always run straight for the stairs and wait at the gate for us to lift you over; "Night night" you head for your blankies to go to bed; for either "Go" or "Bye bye" you run to the back door where we go out into the garage; and "No" - you'll shake your head back and forth as you're doing what we've told you NOT to do, or else when we say no, you hurry and go faster before we can catch and stop you.
- Your fine motor skills have improved tremendously in the past several weeks. Your dad is going to blog about it more later, but you are so good at stacking blocks or placing puzzle pieces with a steady hand. In the tub you lay all of your foam animals neatly on top of each other in your boat. You have also started coloring - of course it's still scribbles, but you stay on the page and you love the look of different colors showing up on the paper.
- As your personality gets more defined, so do your relationships. Your dad is the fun one. He talks to you a lot more than I do, and works with you patiently in building things out of blocks or putting together puzzles. He is the one that follows you closely when we're not at home, when I'm more inclined to let you run off. You know that if you want to have fun, your dad is the one you go to. You and I have a lot of fun together too, don't get me wrong. But lately you've started holding my hand while we sit together on the couch, or you'll come lay your head on my lap. You want me if you're hurt or tired or hungry. It's great that you have different relationships with both of us and I love watching those change and strengthen every day.
We are so grateful that 14 months ago today you came to live in our home.
Love,
Mama and Dada
