11 months of you...

My sweet George,

My letter to you this month is few days late. I could blame it on the busy events of last week, preparing for your first Thanksgiving and going out of town but, to be honest, I think it is more because I cannot believe that my next letter to you will be on your first birthday. The past eleven months have been filled with countless joys and my heart and life are fuller than I could have ever imagined because of you.

At 11 months you...

• stand on your own for brief moments, until you remember you are supposed to be holding on and grasp for the closest surface.
• walk around the house behind your push toy. You are so fast, quickly learned to maneuver around corners and away from walls and say "voom, voom, vooooom..." as you go. Pretty much the cutest. thing. ever.
• initiate peek-a-boo several times a day, whether it is from behind a chair or around a corner. You'll start the game and let out big, long belly laughs when you make eye contact with whoever plays with you.
• are headstrong. You want what you want, exactly when you want it and will stop at nothing to get it. This includes scaling the couch, using your toys, pillows or whatever else can serve as a step stool - unassisted. Oh boy!
• eat, eat and eat some more. You still have a terrific appetite and continue willing to try anything. You are still eating purees in addition to whole foods, mainly to help give you enough to eat because chewing with only two teeth is tiring work.
• have slept though the night several times in the past month. Then, you hit a growth spurt and your sleep took a dive again. Then DST started and complicated things further. One day you'll figure it out.
• are wearing 12 month clothes (though some pants are already too short!) and size 3 diapers (size 4 at night).
• are saying: Mama, Dada, Yia Yia (grandma), voom (vroom), this, and got.
• love books. You flip through the pages of your favorite books several times a day and hold them out to us to read to you. When we read the Mr. Brown book one page says, "He can sound like a hand on a door. Knock, Knock, Knock." Mama will knock on the floor and you'll crawl over and knock, too.
• have some separation anxiety. You want to know where your Daddy and I are every moment when we are at home. If one of us goes in another room, you will crawl over and knock at the door, yelling for us.
• will pick up the tiniest piece of nothing from the floor and put it in your mouth. When I attempt to retrieve whatever it is you will either 1) smirk and crawl as fast as you can in the other direction or 2) fish it out of your mouth and proudly hand it over. Let's work on developing #2 a bit more, shall we?
• play well with others. We have had a few playdates this month and you have played so well with the other babies around your age. You will share toys and are very gentle when you touch other kids.
• enjoy music. You fall fast asleep to your music in the car and bounce/dance to the Toddler Tunes music channel on cable or the songs on your toys.

You have grown so much in the past month and, every once in awhile, I catch a glimpse of you as the big boy you are becoming. It both thrills me to see you thriving and saddens me (just a bit) that you are a baby for just a few more weeks. I plan to enjoy every minute of time with you in this last month of babyhood.

I love you with all that I am, to the moon and back,

Mama