isoglossia

This is going to be a tough one. The last month has been so tumultuous in terms of you, I am wondering how we can do it justice with nothing but some paltry words and a handful of JPEGs. It is a daunting task. Then again, you have been a daunting baby, so here goes.

In the last month you have changed a lot. It seems that your progress, if charted, would describe an ever-steepening curve. You can definitely sit up, and by this I mean not just remain in a more-or-less seated position while we photograph you only to slump over like a wet sand castle the minute the shutter clicks. No, you can sit your own self up unassisted. And you do all the time. To be lying down in any form now is anathema to you. Unless you are lying on your front getting ready to crawl. Yes, crawl. You can do it. Just a short month ago you could sort of ooze your way in a generally forward direction, amoeba-like. But during August you finally cracked the crawling code, which is (I no longer need to tell you this) “ass up, knees forward!” Now this is your mantra, and you practice it all the time.

All of your motor skills are improving rapidly now. You seem to get it. This will be remembered, I think, as the month during which you figured out how the world works. That it is a lot of work, but that the work brings certain pay-offs. I give credit for this lesson, the final driving home of it anyway, to your American cousins. You did a lot of socialization over there, and I think being exposed to all of those other little people showed you that there is a point to all of this pain and frustration of tasting carpet when you want to move. One cousin in particular, 23 month-old N, showed you how soon you can really be walking and talking.

Talking. You haven’t shut up since we left Maine. Sometimes you are ranting away on some sort of narrative track, it seems. Your squawks of joy or excitement have become much more articulate. But mostly you’ve been complaining. There are days when your whine cuts into our heads like a bandsaw. It’s a constant, sustained nasal moan and sounds like a tea kettle just about to boil steam out of its whistle. We hate this sound more than your actual crying, I think, and to be honest there are times when it’s hard to like you very much. These times are almost exclusively products of the noises you make. You have gotten to be quite the Jekyll-&-Hyde baby, though; in literally one second you can go from the most vexatious little bastard to the charmingest wee bairn in the world. You sing to us.

You were pretty charming for our trip to the New World last month. You travelled well, or at least better than expected, both going and coming, and while there you managed to save your little tantrums and fits of horrid behavior for your mother and father exclusively, so all those American relatives don’t know the truth about you. I think it was very good for you to meet all those people, especially the smaller ones, but also Grandpa and Grandma, aunties, uncles, and dogs and cats.

Firsts this month for you:

• First plane ride
• First time in France
• First time in U.S.
• First night in your own room
• First mosquito bites
• First teeth
• First hot dog

We have watched in anticipation and horror as your sharp little teeth cut their way through your tender little gums. As I write this, four have poked their heads through, but this information gets dated really fast. Your biting has advanced by a quantum leap. You’re crawling around on the floor and the next thing I know is that a moray eel has latched onto my toe. because of this new chewing ability, your patience with being spoon-fed is waning. You want to do it yourself (you want to do everything yourself, except sleep, which you are still boycotting), and you can. You can sit on the floor and scoop up meaty bits of hrenovke with relative ease, and get most of them into your mouth, or at least into my pants or down your mother’s bra.

Now about this crawling thing: for a while we thought you might bypass it altogether and go straight for the walking, like your American uncle did so long ago, but no. You finally figured out the ass-hump, and now you can go. This is not entirely a good thing around the house. With all this new autonomy, you have become even more dictatorial than ever. You want what you want and you want it now. Usually whatever you want is the thing we have in our hand, be it remote control, camera, sunglasses, bottle of poison, etc. In fact, you have an unfailing ability to pick out the least appropriate object within your body length and set out on an implacable mission to get that thing into your mouth, dammit. You have developed an unhealthy obsession with the CD collection, and I don’t think it’s the Atomik Harmonik cover art you’re interested in. No, you are bent on destruction. What’s more, you are showing every sign of moving right on to the walking thing ASAP. You scorn your knees.

We’re going to cut you some slack here, given the teeth-cutting, but it’s been a tough few weeks lately, with you becoming more and more needy, and vocally so. You spend a disproportionate amount of time howling, whining, crying, yowling, shrieking, screaming…get the picture? and very little time sleeping. I try to recall the time some war criminals removed my wisdom teeth as an attempt to feel more sympathy for your plight, but I have to admit that it’s hard sometimes. And your mother is exposed to your misery 24/7. I don’t know how she does it. She has been using phrases like “at the end of my rope” and “desperate” and “Dumpster®” lately. I will have to buy her a nicer Christmas gift this year than that Harpic Ready-Brush she got last year. You should start thinking about a gift, too. This has been a hell of a month.