11 months

DJ Keen
Originally uploaded by kuckibaboo.

One month away from celebrating your first birthday. Wow! I’m sure this next month is going to fly by as quickly as the last 11. I wonder, what it is about having babies that accelerates the passing of time? This past month has been another action packed, baby chasing, house-baby proofing adventure, as you love to explore places that are deemed unsafe by your parents. You charge every door that has been left open especially if it spends the day cutting you off from some magical mystery that is being unfairly kept from you. You have graduated into the 4 x 4 category of crawling. Simply put, not much other than doors can stand in your way. Even the bodies of your pooped parents splayed across the hardwood are mere molehills to you. Despite your crawling conquests you are very reluctant to try walking. For the time being you are quite happy to stand and cling to chairs and tables but as soon as moving your feet is required you’d much rather get back down on your knees to get from A to B. And yes, we’re fine with that for now! Take you’re time sweet boy, you’ve got a lifetime to run us off our feet!

You LOVE books. They are the first thing you want to play with after you wake up and the last thing you want to play with before you go to bed. You have two categories of books and they are located in two areas of the apartment. Your bedroom books are those with paper pages and are mostly gifts from friends and family and you require supervision while looking at them or you’ll tear the pages. Then there are your living room books, which are board books or soft plastic and fairly indestructible. You easily spend an hour a day looking at your books, flipping the pages, pointing at things and of course toting them around in your mouth as you travel our apartment. You have no problem sitting still for stories and you carefully turn each page in the proper direction. You don’t watch TV but you do get to see a few video pod casts. Your favorite pod cast is National Geographic video shorts and you get to watch a couple on the computer after dinner.

We weighed you yesterday and you are now 9 kilos (19.8 lbs)! Yippee! Dad gets to turn your car seat to face forward! And you’ve grown 4 cm in length in the last month so you are now 74 cm tall. We haven’t really had a solid word out of you yet but I think you’re starting to direct mumumum and dadada at us. Hopefully your first word won’t be fart (at least I’m hoping that anyways, your dad of course would be thrilled!). You eat a lot and love green peas pretty much more than anything. We have to give them to you at the end of your meal otherwise that’s all you’ll want to eat. Peas are good for you and all but they make for downright epic diaper changes! You also really love noodles, which is a blessing for those rare occasions when we go out for dinner. Two full-length udon noodles can keep you occupied for quite some time. You love to share your food and are always wanting to feed your mom and dad bits of your crackers or fruit. I’ve started teaching you what to do with a fork and you’ve got the basic concept down. In recent days you seem to have developed a sense of humor! You will outright laugh or giggle at all kinds of things like your father sitting on the toilet! You got your first hair cut last weekend and it makes you look so much older! Your dad held (wrangled) you while I managed the clippers. We did a pretty good job and only missed one spot. You didn’t seem to mind the process too much although you seemed to dislike the vibrating action of the clippers against your head. Drooling is back on your list of full time activities. We don’t see any new teeth yet but the ones you have now are defiantly moving closer together so there something going on in those gums of yours. You’ve established a solid sleep schedule of in bed between 7 and 8 pm up between 5 and 6 am, morning nap at 9am for 2-3 hours and then a little afternoon nap around 2 or 3pm for usually less than an hour. Missing the afternoon nap is not a big deal but missing the morning nap is parentcide and we avoid this AT ALL COSTS. It’s one thing to have grumpy parents but a grumpy baby takes days to recover from. You had your first quasi illness a couple of weeks ago. Some sort of minor sinus infection we figure. It was a week of hell for you and I won’t get into the details of what it did to us!

Eiko, your dad and I have been busy shopping for a koi no buri set for you. We’re really looking forward to celebrating kodomo no hi with you and can’t wait to watch your beautiful flags spinning in the spring wind from our balcony.

This next month we will take you on your first camping/road trip. It will be our last big adventure on Hokkaido until we bring you back when you are old enough to remember and appreciate seeing your birthplace. We’re both excited and nervous about this trip as we’ll be more than a days drive from home, which makes pulling the plug a little difficult so please be a good boy!

Happy 11 months birthday my boy. You never cease to amaze us with your how fast you learn new things and adapt to different and new situations. We love you squishy!