Dear Hadley,
Today you are ten months old. So does that mean you are a “tween” of babyhood? If so, you definitely have the attitude to go along with it. You are generally a very happy and content little girl, but if we take something away from you or stop you from doing something you want to do, you go from peaceful and calm to full on MELTDOWN. Your Daddy says you get this from me, but I have no idea what he is talking about.

The biggest development this month has been your mobility. You started crawling on the day I wrote your nine month letter, but your skill level has improved so much in the last 30 days. For one thing, you are now fast. What was once a slow and very deliberate movement is now turbo speed. By the time I turn my head to see what is making you squeal with delight, you are already on the other side of the room and getting into something different. Last weekend you accidentally (I shudder to think you did it on purpose) figured out how to open the sliding screen door and before we knew it you were heading out on the back deck. Kid, are you TRYING to give me an anxiety attack?!

Not one week after you started crawling you were already mastering the stairs. So now my life is a constant state of opening and closing baby gates. As soon as I open one (like to let your sister upstairs to go to the bathroom) you are heading for the stairs and making a break for it! I am very diligent about closing the gate at the top of the stairs, but I am encouraging you to climb up the stairs. You just require a spotter. You like to stop, stand up, and look back to see who is following you (or see if anyone noticed you were fleeing!) and you aren’t always the most sturdy when you do so. And until you learn to go down the stairs safely (preferably sliding, feet first, on your tummy) I’ll be hovering right behind you every move you make.

Your constant movement doesn’t even cease when you go to bed. We find you in the strangest positions because you wiggle, roll, and crawl all over in your crib. But I have to admit the strangest was when I walked in to find you sitting up, one foot dangling out of the crib, totally passed out. You had apparently sat up in bed and couldn’t figure out how to lay back down so you just went to sleep right there.

My once wonderful eater, who would open her mouth like a little bird to every spoonful of food is no longer. You now refuse to eat anything pureed. In fact, if we come at you with a spoon you turn your head to the side and clamp your mouth shut. Instead, you insist upon feeding yourself. I have been chopping up every thing we eat into tiny, gummable bites just for you and you could not be happier about it. Sure, it makes a huge mess and you pretty much need a bath (or at the very least a washcloth or several baby wipes) after each meal, but I am kind of happy to be done with baby food. I love sharing with you foods I love and watching your trepidation and then excitement as you try something new.

To my surprise, one of your favorite foods is chicken. Well, any meat, really. I will cover your high chair tray with everything from sliced olives, to blueberries, to spiral veggie pasta, and you will deliberately seek out the little chunks of chicken hidden within the array of finger foods. It’s almost comical to see you scanning the tray to see if you missed any of those tasty morsels before settling for a less tantalizing fruit or veggie to gum.

Speaking of gums, just yesterday I saw something in your mouth and upon closer inspection, I noticed the very first signs of a TOOTH. That’s right, my little girl isn’t going to be toothless forever! I was pretty surprised too because you haven’t been unnecessarily grumpy, excessively drooly, or any of the other tell tale signs of teething. And that is just fine with me! I’d be happy if those sharp, little teeth came in with as little disruption as possible. (I haven’t been able to get a picture of the new tooth yet. Partially because it has barely broken the surface and partially because lately it takes the jaws of life to get you to open your mouth on command. So instead here is an adorable picture of you laughing hysterically at a wiggling, giggling stuffed cow.)

Your hair is another thing that has shown up all of a sudden. What was once fine little wisps of strawberry blond fuzz, is now looking like actual locks of golden hair. It’s still to early to tell, but it looks like it might even be curly! When you get out of the bath, or wake up sweaty after a nap, your hair frames your face in a chaos of curly cowlicks.

I know it’s not new information, but it demands to be said: Ana is your favorite person in the entire world. You spend the majority of your day just trying to find her. This has been made especially tricky since school started again. Every day after we drop her off you stare longingly at her empty car seat. Then once she returns you are so giddy you look at her and just smile and laugh. I promise I will do my best to entertain you in her absence, but those size 12 Twinkle Toes are surprisingly large shoes to fill!

As you get older and are more interested in things around you (besides your sister) we are able to take you to more exciting places. We recently took at trip to Newport to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium and you had a great time. You simply loved the shark tunnel. You were mesmerized by the sharks swimming, literally, all around us.

Oh Hadley, you are so amazing. I am having so much fun watching you discover the world around you. Whether that is tasting your Daddy’s latest BBQ chicken recipe, watching tiger sharks swim over your head, or simply seeing your sister first thing each morning. You are such a delight to be around that I find myself always wanting to be near you. Sometimes at night I walk past your bedroom and an invisible force pulls me in and I cannot bring myself to do anything but stand over you and watch you sleep. You are simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful and adorable, sweet and mischievous, cuddly and independent. You are a force to be reckoned with and I could not be more proud to call myself your Mama.

All my love,
Mama

Dear Hadley,
Today you are nine months old. And what a busy month this has been! You are learning so much so fast, I’m having a hard time keeping track of all your accomplishments. But the big news of the month happened only this afternoon: you are officially crawling.

Crawling was such an exciting milestone, simply because you have been working on it for SO LONG. You’ve had the physical ability for awhile now, but you just didn’t know you could do it. Then you were actually doing it, but I don’t think you even realized it. You would crawl forward a few inches, but would get frustrated (or distracted) and stop to sit down, putting you further back than where you started. So today I saw you going for it and I managed to get out my phone and recorded you crawling across the hall to your sister… and the unicorn pillow pet she was using as bait.

Another thing you mastered this month was learning to use a straw. You are obsessed with water bottles and so it was only a matter of time before you finally figured out how to use one. You started by chewing on my Camelbak and once I realized you were figuring out the bite valve, I bought you your own learn-to-drink-from-a-straw sippy cup. It has a cool feature where a parent can gently squeeze the cup and brings the liquid to the top of the straw so you can taste what is inside. And that was all it took. You sucked on the straw, your eyes got really wide with glee, and that was it. You were hooked.

Another thing that makes you exceptionally happy is reading books with Daddy. Every night after bath time, you two curl up on our bed and read a few books. You get so excited, listening to your Dad reading, and touching all the textures on the pages, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm as he turns each page.

One of the things that has NOT been fun this month is teething. I still cannot see, or even feel, a single tooth, but the symptoms are certainly there. You are biting every thing you can fit in your mouth, drooling all over, and you have even spiked a few unexplained high fevers. I feel so bad when you look up at me with those sad, pleading eyes. Don’t worry, sweet girl, it will all be over soon enough.

Involving your mouth, but with much more entertainment and less pain, is you learned to stick out your tongue. It all started when we were at the Wings and Waves water park. I think you discovered the taste of chlorine on your lips and you kept darting your tongue in and out. But once we were back home (and chlorine free) you did it again while you were eating and discovered you could lick your lips. It was the cutest thing, but as it is hard to feed you with your tongue sticking out, it’s probably not the best skill to practice during meal time.

Speaking of meal time, you use to be our very predictable eater, everything we gave you you simply accepted and gobbled up. But things have changed recently. I’m sure some of it has to do with teething and some of it was the hot weather we have had, but most of it has to do with finger foods. Once you discovered you could actually feed yourself, you are less and less inclined to eat the purees we feed you on a spoon. I’m having to start getting creative with your meals to keep you happy…and fed! But as you are still a champion nurser, there isn’t any risk of you going hungry any time soon!

Aside from the teething frustration and the eating complications, you are such a happy little girl. I just love this age because every little thing is new and exciting. All we have to do is show you something you haven’t seen before and any fussing or crying screeches to a halt as you happily examine the new object. You are so content to explore the world around you and discover every little thing that it brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.

One of your favorite discoveries happened just the other day. You had woken up from your nap, and I could hear you happily chatting away in your crib, so I didn’t come pick you up right away. Then I heard a loud bang and, thinking you had somehow fallen out of your crib, I ran up the stairs to your room only to find you smiling up at me. You were having so much fun you kicked your legs and discovered you could donkey kick the wall of the crib. You kept doing it over and over and you thought it was just the funniest thing ever. In the future, I’d appreciate it if the things you get so much joy out of were things less likely to give your mama a heart attack. Thanks.

As you get bigger and stronger, your Daddy (who is in charge of the nightly bath time) has been letting you and Ana take baths together more and more. This delights you both to no end. There is very little that your sister does that does not just make you shriek with delight. And it goes both way too. It gets to the point where you are both in the tub just giggling and laughing so much I often have to come up and see just what is so funny! I am so happy that you and your sister can share these special times together…and that you occasionally let your father and I just sit back and observe.

Since you have obviously been getting quite the control over your physical abilities, we decided that you were finally ready for your very first Gymboree class. Ana, as a Gymboree “graduate,” was so excited to share it all with you and she didn’t want to miss watching you experience it all for the first time. So Daddy, Ana and I all went with you and it was every bit as amazing as we remembered. I loved watching your eyes light up with each new discovery and seeing you giggle as we sang and danced to the silly songs. I am so happy that we are able to do these fabulous things with you and help you enrich your life in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine yet.

Oh, Hadley, we have been having so much fun together, it’s hard to tie it up with a nice pretty bow. It would take a myriad of ribbons of different textures and colors to even begin to describe all the things that make you so special. All I know is that you are one amazing child and I just love that I am able to stay home with you so I don’t have to miss one single moment of watching you become the person you are going to be. Because I know that you are going to be spectacular.

All my love,
Mama