14 Month Update

Dear Lana,

You are officially 14 months old, and I am officially an addict. I came to this realization in the airport today as I made a quick day trip for work. Everywhere I turned were babies – babies in strollers, babies in car seats, babies toddling behind their mothers who didn’t have to leave them behind for work. I hadn’t even left Atlanta yet and I was already going through withdrawal. Things got so bad on the way home that I briefly considered asking the woman sitting two rows ahead of me on the plane to let me hold her baby. I was hoping for a quick hit to last me until I could see you again.

I elected not to scare the poor woman because I knew that no random baby could ever substitute for you. You’ve had a strong personality from the start (drop kicks in the womb come to mind), but it’s really started to emerge in the past month. Walking has given you the freedom to do what you want and, to my total amazement, it turns out you want to help me. One morning after a particularly nasty diaper change you jumped up and grabbed the dirty diaper out of my hand. I prepared for you to fast pitch that bag of poop into the wall, but instead you toddled over to the diaper pail, pulled up the lid, and dropped the diaper in.

You also like to help out by dropping produce into the bag at the grocery store and by wiping the tub with your washcloth during a bath. The latter skill you first showed off at your grandparents’ house. (They’ve invited you to spend the night again on Friday, but I suspect it’s only because the tub needs a cleaning.) My favorite part of watching you do these things is the rousing ovation you give yourself after doing something good. It’s a technique that I should probably adopt for myself as I go through a day of thankless work and chores. Finally finished the status report? Applause, applause. Unloaded the dishwasher? Bravo, dear Jennifer.

In other news, you’re also doing more talking now and using actual words to tell us what you want. Your favorite right now is “juice” or, more precisely, “joooos.” You can identify a “doog” barking in the neighborhood, and you often recite, “No, no, no” at the exact moment that you do something you’ve been told not to. All of these choices are a tremendous improvement over your fallback method of communication, which involves entire diatribes composed only of whines and grunts: “Uhhh, uh, uh, UHHH, uh, Uhh. Uhh? UHHH, UHHH!” Keep working on that vocabulary, babe. I'd hate to have to send you to Auburn.



Love,
Mom