Ten months (minus a day or two)

I am a morning person, and not just in the sense that I can drag my butt out of bed after just one snooze. There are evenings on the couch that I actually begin to look forward to the next morning's coffee and quiet. It's a precious, sacred time, and I miss it dearly when I sleep in. Usually these dark, quiet moments are spent studying the Bible, as I've noticed that any other time slot makes this devotion feel like a task to check off my to do list. Not the point. This morning, however, I feel compelled by the nostalgic historian within. I want to record (for myself mostly) a brief glimpse into the unique place I see my son in right now. Judah will be ten months old on February 2nd.






Judah loves his sister, loves food, loves to play peek-a-boo and "This is the Way the Ladies Ride," loves his blue blanket from YaYa, and could eat his weight in Cheerios. He will put anything in his mouth and especially likes cords and strings. He hates getting dressed, particularly getting his little arms in and out of sleeves. He hates to be startled, and doesn't like to be left out of the action when his self-propelled family members move out of the room he is playing in. Judah has loved every food he has tried, except peas. (I can't say I blame him.)






Every small child seems to slide around on an ever-shifting continuum of stages, milestones, preferences, challenges, and clothing sizes: change is the only constant. But the change in Judah has been notable in the past week, as he picks up new skills daily. Movement hasn't been lost on the boy for the last month or so, but one could never quite say HOW he moved from one side of the room to the side with the Trouble, other than that it involved a calculated combination of turning, backward crawling, and moving from butt-to-tummy and vice versa. This week, however, he's finally putting it together, and is crawling. The object of his desire: the computer. Or, if we're in Eden's room: the tippy little stool where we set her water cup and sound spa.

Trouble.

Judah Justin has always found himself at the top of the growth charts, maintaining a 97th percentile placement for height and weight since he was just a little bean. This is no big surprise to his family, as we are quite audibly aware of his near constant hunger. He is getting past the hair-touch infant gag reflex (which had me offering cheerios BEFORE he'd ingested anything else, lest we lose another meal,) and is working on his dexterity with little chunks of sweet potato, scrambled eggs, peas, pears. Although he is doing fairly well with this new skill, it is a much slower method of conveying food to stomach than the prior practice of my shoveling purees into his little bird mouth between adamant demands that I move faster. The scales at the pediatrician's office will tell us if he's kept up his pattern of growth when we visit her on Tuesday, but I have a feeling his none-too-loose 18 month clothing will speak for itself.



This post has been composed in a few installments, delayed by waking children, changing diapers, mashing bananas and spooning out yogurt, refilling my coffee mug only to find it cold by the time I have a hand free to take a sip, and, most recently, Eden calling from the other room to say, "Mommeeee.... Yook at Judah! He's getting in twabah!" I can only imagine how exponentially the "twabah" will increase as Judah Justin perfects his newfound skills in locomotion.

I think I've got some child-proofing to do.