A letter to Lucas at 10 months.

Hello little one!

Ten months has been a fun age for all of us. We've had so much fun watching you grow. We’re starting to notice more and more traits that we associate with toddlers. Like the way you now prefer to wander and explore between bites of food. How you love to point at each new thing you see, waitingfor us to notice and then identify it for you. How you like to play with your toys now in a totally different way. You’re using them now, not just as chewtoys and objects with which to hit things, but in the way in which they wereintended to be used. You’re favorite at the moment is a small foam ball thatyou roll and then chase all over the apartment. You like to hit it with thehandheld cheese grater. The grater is flat so it looks like you’re playing cricket. The other day you spied the cheese grater in the dishwasher and crawledup into the dishwasher to get it.

Lucas in the dishwasher, trying to get to the cheese grater.

We've moved to Baltimore and have been settling into citylife over the past month. You've handled the transition really well. There hasbeen a lot of clinginess to me, but that's really to be expected sinceeverything is so new here. You've been having a great time exploring our newapartment. It's huge - over 1100 square feet -so you've been getting yourexercise crawling all over it. You've banished that belly crawl once and forall. You've got serious space to cover now and you've decided that it requiresserious crawling. Hands and knees only!

You're trying to talk to us all the time now, and you talkto yourself a lot too. We can understand some of the babbles. When you want toeat  you do a really distinctive coughing sound in the back of yourthroat.  When we're out of your sight youdo this high pitched sound that reminds me of a sonar. Perhaps you're hopingit'll ping off of us so you will always know our exact whereabouts?  When you wake up from your nap and you wantme to come get you, I swear you say "Coo-eee" in a sing-songy voice.You know, like an upper-crust, 60 year old British woman? When I go in to getyou, I always expect to see you sporting a gray chin-length bob, wearing an ill-fittingmen’s hunting jacket and waving your gardening gloves at me. Perhaps somedayI'll be changing your diaper and you'll confide to me that Mrs. Watkins downthe street is letting her rose bushes get into the most dreadful state. ThenI'll know that it wasn't just my imagination.

You aren’t in a car that much anymore. We either walk, ortake the train or bus now. You love not being confined to your car seat whilein a moving vehicle. The only challenge has been to stop you from licking everysurface on said buses and trains. Well that, and getting you to not press thebright yellow strips running down the sides that say “Press To Signal Stop”.More than once you’ve pressed them and I’ve had to yell to the front that it wasa mistake. I’m seriously thinking of writing the city and asking them to paintall of those strips a very boring Soviet-style gray. It would no longer beattractive to babies and since it would be hard for everyone to find, the busdrivers would no doubt have far less stops to make.

Lucas on the train. Isn't he pretty?

Living close to daddy’s work has been wonderful. It meansthat daddy can come home for lunch. This means that twice a day as you hear daddywalk in the door you start waving your arms excitedly and then crawl toward thedoor while saying “dada, dada” over and over. It's adorable. It’s a  long hallway you have tocrawl down to get to the door, so you’ve also learned to say ” I’m just goingto take a little breather”, “Water, please” and “I’d be there faster dad, butmy sciatica is killing me.” 

We love every minute that we spend with you sweet boy, and we love that you make everyday so much more fun as we see it through your eyes.

We love you little bear,

Mommy and Daddy