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

A Letter to Lucas At 9 Months

My 9 month old.

Dear Luke,

I love you sweet boy! This letter is a little overdue since you are now 9 1/2 months old. We've had a lot going on lately, we found out we're moving to Baltimore and we've been going back and forth a lot looking for an apartment. We went to the convention last weekend in Newburgh, NY and the you've been sick with lots of mucous and a cough. Oh and I have jury duty all month long. Phew! All of that has made our life very busy.

No one has been busier than you, though. You have done so much in the past month. When you crawl now it's always on your hands and knees - we rarely see that army commando crawl now. In reality, though we don't really see you crawling all that much these days. Once you started pulling yourself up on the couch and cruising around it you lost interest in crawling.

This is the sight we constantly see.

Here's a video of how Luke feels about it.

You are developing the the sweetest personality. I still don't see any signs of possessiveness in you. We play a game where you when I make a popping sound with my mouth and open it, you take the pacifier out of your mouth and put it in mine. It gets me every time. Speaking of games you have so many that you love. Of course peekaboo is still your favorite, but you also love to have a ball rolled to you, you love to be read to, you love to imitate every gesture we make and you love to discover new things. To show your enthusiasm for all of this fun you will clap enthusiastically whenever we say "Yay!"

You really, really don't like being out of sight of me these days. If I leave the room you let out a wail like you'll never see me again.

You've gotten so very cuddly. You love to be carried while you snuggle your head on our shoulders. You easily fall asleep in our arms now. We love all of the cuddling, in fact I think we like it more than you do. At night now, when you sleep, you slide one chubby little arm around our necks and pull us closer to you.

I'll end with a video of your favorite new game. You shake your head at us and think it's the funniest thing ever. We do too.

We love you little bear, all the way to the moon, twice around the earth and back home again.
Mommy and Daddy

Grandpa and Luke

It's a special relationship between a guy and his grandpa. Grandpas let you drink out of their seltzer cans. They let you taste stuff that mommy would never let a guy try. And they make the best funny sounds and faces. Yep. This baby loves grandpa.

Lucas and Nonni

Luke hasn't been feeling well for the past couple days. He's really congested and hasn't wanted to eat. We suspect that he's working on his top teeth and that's what is causing all this unpleasantness for him. It's made him very cuddly and sleepy. That means that he'll fall asleep while being held. Mom and I were visiting this morning and while we talked Luke cuddled in and fell asleep.

I think Nonni liked it:)

Chris Graduated!!

After 3 years of juggling work, spiritual responsibilities, a pregnant wife and then a new baby, and an incredibly rigorous schedule at nursing school, Chris is officially DONE. Graduation is over and he is now a registered nurse. I'm so proud of how he persevered even when it was very difficult to keep going. We also so appreciate the support we received from both sets of our parents. There is no way we could have done it without you guys!

Would you like to see how Luke enjoyed the ceremony? 

I suggest you turn down the volume on your computer before watching. 

Lucas with Grandma and Poppy

We're going back in time a bit with these pictures, but I thought you would still want to see them. These were taken when Luke was 6 months old. I think they like each other, don't you?

A letter to Luke at 8 months.

Dear Lucas,

You're 8 months old! And what a fun age eight months is turning out to be! You are increasingly more of a person now with a personality and a sense of humor and very specific preferences. We love how you are so playful! You find every single thing you come in contact with fascinating. Tonight as I held you at the meeting you reminded me of a Tasmanian Devil - twisting and turning to get at objects that were out of reach or to grin at people behind us. Seeing your excitement about everyday things makes daddy and I see it all with new eyes.

You have 2 teeth now. Right on the bottom in the center. You handled these new mouth invaders really well. About 2 weeks before they popped up you were a little fussy and you got a slight fever and then in the week after they were out you were a little fussy. I think you just had to adjust to sharp objects in a formerly soft place.

You wave goodbye now whenever anyone walks out the door! It's amazing! As soon as someone waves at you your little arm comes up and you flap it back at them. It blows me away that you're old enough to do that.

Your starting to pull yourself up using chairs or any other stationary object. Of course in the tub you've been cruising for a while. Since the water makes you buoyant you walk all around the outside of the tub holding onto the sides, but it's just been in the last week that you've really been attempting it on dry land.

You've starting to remind me of a baby koala whenever we're in a situation that you're unsure about. You will cling to me so hard if I try to put you down and if I do manage to get you down you'll cry as if I've broken your heart. That means that you and I are spending a lot of time attached to each other. I'm getting very adept at doing everything one-handed.

You are a very large baby. The last time we weighed and measured you was a month and a half ago and you were almost 21 pounds and 28 inches long. Since then you've grown out of all of your 9 month clothes and you've moved onto a 12 month size. Remember how I said you've gotten clingy lately? Wanting to be held all the time? Thanks to you sweet boy I now have shoulders that would make a linebacker jealous. You think Iron Man is tough? HAH. He's got nothing on your mama with SHOULDERS OF STEEL.

You remind us more and more of a little boy and not just a baby. We're seeing glimpses of the toddler you will soon be. You love to roughhouse and to play Chase the Baby. (Although you don't really understand the concept of a game of chase yet. Most of the time when I come after you you grin with delight and head straight into my arms. Then you cover me with kisses. You ARE very good at chasing me, but if I crawl away you cry because all you want is to get to me so I'll hold you tight. I wish our games of chase would be like this forever, but I know that soon you'll be big enough to run in the opposite direction.) You love to follow the vacuum cleaner all around our little house and when it gets close enough to touch you try to lick it as if that will help you to figure out how it gets it's Amazing Powers. You love the kitchen because that's where all the fun doors and drawers that slam are. You pull them open and shut, open and shut just because you can.

We love watching you eat. You have started to get preferences with food. Most nights I give you veggies cooked in chicken broth and some butter until they're very soft. You love them. Actually the veggies are so yummy that daddy and I love them too and sometime we steal some off your tray, but you think it's funny so that's okay. You love fresh juices even if I mix greens like kale or beet tops into them. You also will eat liver!  I'm glad because I have to choke it down, but you seem to relish it.

You're sleeping beautifully now. Eight hours a night without waking, then you eat and go back down for four more. To get you to do this I very slowly weaned you from your feedings at night by feeding you for a minute and a half less in each feeding every night. Since it was gradual you didn't seem to realize it was happening until one night instead of eating when you woke up I just patted you each time you woke. Then each night after that I would sooth you less and less so that you would learn to sooth yourself. It took about 2 weeks total, but it was so worth it. Now that I 'm getting more sleep I'm starting to feel like a functioning human again.

Sitting up so straight in your stroller.

You love the outdoors. If you ever get bored or upset all we have to do is step outside and you are instantly happy. When we take walks you sit up as straight as you can in your stroller so you can see as much as you can. You like to lay in the grass, and you like to roll in the grass, and you like to eat the grass. We think you're part cow. Or maybe that you need the fiber so you can cough up a hairball. Perhaps if you didn't lick the vacuum cleaner so much you wouldn't have hairballs that you needed to cough up. Just a thought.


We love to listen to you talk to yourself. You'll babble away to yourself and be completely entertained by it. Oh, and the other day I think you told me a joke! You babbled a long sentence and then you started laughing and laughing. When you stopped to take a breath you looked at me as if to say, "Wasn't that funny mommy?" That look made me laugh which delighted you and made you chuckle more. We were both sitting on the floor just giggling about each others reactions.

We love this age so much that we wish we could pause for a little while right here, but we know that then we would miss out on the next super cool thing you'll do. So I guess you can keep growing little bear.
We love you, all the way to the moon, twice around the earth and back home again,
Mommy and Daddy