Benjamin Penguin

Dear Benjamin,

We are a mere few weeks away from you turning a year old. I can’t even begin to process that information yet, and luckily I don’t have to by focusing instead on the past few weeks. Tonight, when I was walking LuLu for her evening walk, a delicate snow was falling. There was a brilliant white glow lighting our path and the electric pulse of a winter night was vibrating through the air around us. I was instantly transported to the snowy landscape of last December when I gingerly walked that same sidewalk while attempting to navigate the round globe of a belly containing my kicking little boy. What a difference a year makes.

Where do I begin? It was almost as though some supernatural fast forward button has been pressed and you’ve transformed into an older version of your infant self. I’ll start with the thing that has amazed me most. You are standing. I’m trying desperately to think back to the exact day that it happened. I know that towards the end of October, you were starting to lift yourself onto your hands and knees. You never crawled from this position, but you would spend all day willing your knees to scoot forward and your arms to support you as you lifted your body off the ground. After about a week of this, you began to make these rather charming, very tentative efforts to reach your arm out to touch something as you were on your hands and knees. In my memory I picture you reaching out for my arm as I sit on the floor reclining against the wall, but in reality I am pretty sure you were reaching for a DVD case. The blessing of motherhood is such that my continually failing memory can replace reality with very convincing mental vignettes that are more Rockwellian in nature than you grasping for The Kids in the Hall. So while you may have been laying hands on a TV cart or a chair or a DVD case, my brain cannot help but focus on the image of your little arm reaching out to touch mine. The fact that you have done so repeatedly lends an air of authenticity to the whole thing. So really, even if my arm was not the first thing you reached out to touch, it has been the thing that you have sought ever since. It’s almost as though you are inching slowly towards the precipice of toddler independence. You look to Daddy and to me before you do something, and particularly when you are doing something new. You seek this brief reassurance that we are still there, but you’re very eager to learn, to experience, to explore, to feel. So you went from rolling to army crawl to hands and knees, and you stayed there for a few weeks, content to see the world from a slightly different angle. About two weeks ago, Daddy was watching TV with you one evening and he called me into the room. When I walked in, my eyes immediately fell on you because you were standing by the TV cart. Standing. Daddy explained that you had crawled away from him and plopped yourself right in front of the TV and pulled yourself up from the ground without his help at all. Since then, you’ve become exceedingly more gifted at standing and you’ve surpassed Daddy’s ability to stand erect by three minutes, so well done there. At this point, it seems like every few days brings something new. Two weeks ago you were standing and then, because we are awesome parents, you would start falling and nearly crack your head on the hardwood floors. A week ago you could stand and grab things off the table, clearly able to lean as a means of support. A few days ago you learned that if you attempted to fall a certain way, you would land on your butt and not your head. And just today you learned that if you put your arms out slightly, you could almost kinda sorta catch yourself as you were falling. What, exactly, happens to you when you are placed in that crib? Is there a force in there unlocking some nocturnal bionic switch that renders you wholly capable of altering your skill set within the course of 24 hours? And more importantly, can you make room for me? Because I really need to master multiple regression.

I’ve sat down recently to think about why I constantly ponder the relevance of your standing. You’ve done many new things in the eleven months since your birth, but there was something about the standing that hit me in a very different way. A little alarm went off somewhere in my cerebrum that signaled a need to pay attention to this change even if I didn’t quite understand the relevance of it quite yet. I couldn’t put my finger on it for the longest time and then it dawned on me. Standing is what you do when you are big. Babies don’t stand. Babies, even the tiniest of babies, do other things that big people do. Babies eat, babies sleep, babies poop and babies make sounds. Babies blink, babies fart, babies cry and babies smile. These are all things that big people do as well. But babies? They don’t stand. They can’t stand. They have the musculature development of a…me. Or a Daddy. So the act of standing is this demarcation point between total helplessness and the landslide of activity that is growing up. It is this point where the word “baby” seems like an ill fitting label. Because you aren’t a baby now. Not in the sense that you were for these past months. If your pacifier fell out of your mouth and landed a foot away in February, Daddy or I had to plop it back into your mouth. If you wanted to move to a different location in April, Daddy or I needed to pick you up and move you. If you wanted a toy in July, Daddy or I needed to select one and give it to you. If you wanted a cat in August, you had to hope that said cat had the misfortune of traversing a path in front of your grabby hands. Now, however, if you drop your pacifier or want to move or want a toy or need the cat, you simply make it happen. Life is remarkable for many reasons, but one of the things that I find most fascinating is how little an amount of time you spend in that state of complete and utter need. By the time you are one year old you are, for all practical purposes, this miniature version of a fully functional human adult. You aren’t walking to the store or engaging in a light jog for good health, but the framework is there. This is not revolutionary thinking on my part. Parents the world over had this realization long before I ever had the capacity to recognize the power of this singular change on your life (and by extension, our lives). And I am OK with this – OK with the natural order of the world that guarantees that every day we spend together has us one day closer to the point in which your need for Daddy and I becomes more of an abstract state and less a mandatory tool for your survival. It is thankfully a slow transition that allows us all plenty of time to adapt. But the change is happening, accumulating in all the moments accounted for and lost in a day.

But Benjamin, let’s talk about the mimicry. Because while the standing is really impressive, the mimicry is really adorable. In the past few weeks, when someone does something with their hands or their face or their mouth, you attempt to recreate the action, much to the amusement of Daddy and I. If I am not mistaken, it started with random sounds. Like the sound one makes when they flap their lips by pushing air through them. When someone does this now, you stare at them for a few seconds and then slowly and deliberately move your lips into the proper formation to try to make the same sound. Your version generally entails a lot of saliva and is more akin to a “pffft” sound than a “brrrrr” sound, but that distinction is just parsing hairs. It’s the annoying sounds version of the to-may-to/to-mah-to debate. Aside from these sounds, you’ve also taken to shaking your head no. You shake it when you mean yes, you shake it when you mean no, when you are happy, sad, tired. Whenever! It is a multipurpose head movement. I enjoy walking up to you and shaking my head because you’ll generally start shaking your head in response and then it seems like we are partaking in some random gathering of rude Katharine Hepburn impersonators. At some point you also learned that the telephone is to be held in your hand and placed against your ear because that is exactly what you do when handed such a device (even of the toy variety). If I take a marker or a crayon and scribble on a sheet of paper, you’ll do the same. If I take a piece of food and give it to the dog, you also adopt this horribly bad habit and drop pieces of food onto the floor or dangle your hand above the dog until she extracts the morsel from your chubby fist. When I roll a ball towards you, you attempt to roll it back to me. Perhaps the most endearing mimicry is the result of my unintentional habit of jumping in mock startled surprise when something funny or silly happens. Now, when you are excited or acting silly, you’ll jump in mock startled surprise as well. I’ve had many favorite moments throughout the months, but these moments when you mimic us rank very highly for me because it’s the best evidence I have of the increasingly interactive nature of our relationship. I always paid attention to the things that you were doing, but it is incredibly validating as a parent to see that you are now actively paying attention to me. When you were a newborn, it was difficult to imagine that I existed for anything more than a good cuddle and a warm meal. Now it is clear that, while I am still those things, I am also a source of entertainment, a source of encouragement and a source of guidance. This, more than anything else you’ve done to date, has provided me with a precursory glimpse of the intricacy of our future parent/child relationship.

The exponential increase in your curiosity and playfulness is truly something to behold. The mimicry is a part of this, but there is so much more than that. You’re also learning how to be funny. We caught glimpses of this in the past and speculated that you would be something of a ham as you aged, but this skill is increasingly refined with every passing week. When you do something that gets a laugh out of Mama or Daddy, you seem to file it away in your baby mental Rolodex, to be brought forth at some unassuming future time so as to permanently remind us of your infinite cuteness. You’ve learned to high five, and the sheer delight with which we respond to this action has placed it at the top of your “How to Be Precious” inventory. We’ve also found it entirely cute that you take such joy in raiding the contents of our cabinets. You methodically remove the items, tossing them to the floor as you make your way through the shelves. Sometimes you grab two items and, one in each first, rapidly army crawl off with them to the far reaches of the dining room. (And I do mean rapidly. When you think one of us is in pursuit of you to prevent you from doing something and/or retrieving an item you should not have, you turn on your infant rocket booster crawl and go screeching off away from our hands.) It’s all funny until Mama loses her dark chocolate. Then it is considerably less cute. A few weeks back, I purchased for you this little table in the hopes of getting you to practice pulling yourself from a seated to a standing position. You’ve done this and that is cute and all, but in the past few days, you’ve also taken to dancing when the table plays music for you. I say this with a smile on my face, but in all seriousness, the table is like a Fischer Price-stamped drug. It is so loud and bright and flashy that you can’t help but be drawn to it and if you dare turn away to move on to the wooden spoon I have placed on the floor for your amusement, the table starts emitting random sounds and jingles to lure you back. I’m just a touch terrified of the thing and fear the potential repercussions that may come my way when I attempt to pack this thing up for good once you have outgrown it.

You are quite the expressive little gentleman. When you aren’t shaking your head no or high fiving anyone in a 5-foot vicinity, you are making faces. You have a scrunched up face for registering dislike, a furrowed brow and set jaw for registering determination, a rapid blink for registering silliness and your newest face – a look of surprise, wherein you raise your eyebrows and push your mouth into an “o” shape. I’m not 100 percent certain what this face signifies yet. I thought it was a mimicry of a surprised face, but just this morning, I caught you expelling air rapidly from your mouth as you held your lips in that pattern and I am thinking that this not a face, per se, but that you are actually blowing air. And this is where Mama makes embarrassing confession # 427. Mama spent most of her life in the company of cats. Kitties can be willful and stubborn and do not readily take no for an answer. Sometimes kitties get up in your business and try to rub against your face or steal a piece of food from your hand as you move it towards your mouth. In these instances, I have found that the most effective way to get kitties to stop doing something you find kind of annoying is to blow in their face. I don’t know if it is the unavoidable spittle remnants hitting their eyeball or the actual gust of human breath hitting them in the face, but kitties hate getting their face blown upon. Now here is where the confession kicks into full gear. See, pal, I’m afraid that this response is so hardwired in my brain that when you do certain things to me, like rip my glasses off my face of grab a fistful of my hair and yank, I instantaneously start blowing in your face. I don’t do it intentionally – it is a subconscious reaction to something happening in the periphery of my head. But I think that you are now letting me know that you’ve been paying attention to this little habit of mine.

Overall, you are a charming, very relaxed little gentleman that likes to play and likes to explore and loves to give hugs. This is all wonderful. However, there is a new element to your personality that is requiring a touch more patience to deal with and it involves your teeth. I speak specifically of your newfound desire to bite things. On a few occasions, you have taken hold of some piece of my body and chomped down extremely hard. So much so that I actually put you down. You laugh and smile and are still convinced that all is right with the world, but it really hurts. I don’t quite know how to proceed. On the one hand, it is clear that you are not attempting to hurt me. Or maybe you are, but you don’t really understand the complexity of that desire yet. That’s cool. I just recently began to understand why so many people start their day with coffee, and it ain’t for the taste. It has become the only way I can get my brain to work before 2:00pm. So I get that it sometimes takes awhile to understand things. That said, I need to figure out what to do in this situation. It is no less compounded by that fact that Daddy is a tremendous softie and when you do these sorts of things to him, rainbows form over his head and he laughs and declares you the most precious thing he has ever seen. I think we need to start laying the foundation for some behavioral ground rules around here so that I don’t awake one morning with a cast iron pan dangling over my head and a maniacal giggle emanating from your lips. Of course by we, I mean me. I know that you are very young and I am realistic in my assessment of your abilities, but I am also not entirely keen on letting you dictate the way things will always be around here. I’ll cut you the necessary slack, but I don’t know that it’s horrible to begin setting up the expectation that I’d like a little something in return.

In the past week or so, you’ve attended a number of parties, and I am always amazed at what a genial, sociable little guy you are. The first party you attended was a holiday party for all the little babies that you’ve known since you were born (or they were born, since you are older than some of them). A few things stand out regarding your manner of interacting with other little kids. First, you are quite gentle with other kids. You move around the other kids instead of plowing into them. And while some of the babies would shove other babies (including you) to get to the item they desired, you would pay attention when another baby played with a toy you found interesting and then wait until that child had discarded it to take it. You also don’t scream or shout or get angry when another child takes something from you. On a few occasions, you were playing with a toy and some child snatched it out of your hand and you would just look at them for a moment and move on to a different toy. It didn’t really seem to bother you much at all. I’d say that this was just the gloating observations of a loving mother, but the other moms commented on it as well, so I’m pretty confident that I wasn’t imagining what I was seeing. You’re also incredibly friendly with the moms and really seem to enjoy yourself in social situations. You also attended a family party this week and again, you seemed to have a good time. You’re not easily overwhelmed by people and you seem quite comfortable exploring new, unfamiliar places. As I mentioned above, I often take note of the fact that you seem quite willing and able to test the boundaries of your comfort and independence as long as you can see Daddy and I there, smiling and nodding as you move forward. This warms my soul in such a profound way. It makes me think that in years to come, when you begin the heartbreakingly necessary task of setting out on your own, you’ll recognize that while Daddy and I are encouraging you to take life into your hands and make it your own, we are also right there with you, wherever you go, cheering you on.

Love,

Mama

I was just looking through the previous posts and it would appear that I never wrote a Month Ten letter. I’m not shocked, but then again, I’m not happy about it either.

When was Month 10? It had to be the month of October. Those days were spent in a bit of a blur because that was the Month of the Outing. Seriously, I can’t recall doing anything else except taking full advantage of our new zoo pass and the free days at the museum. I was almost terrifyingly committed to getting out of the house to see things. It was the month of transition – that time when the stay-at-home period was coming to a close and the working Mamahood was about to come into effect. So when I was writing the letter labeled Month Nine, I think, because of how delayed it was, I was in effect writing a letter for months Nine and Ten. But that sits poorly with me. It didn’t used to, but as time now passes much more quickly than in the earliest months of parenting, I really cling to the posts and the letters as a reminder of where we have been and what we might expect in the future. At a time when I most need to be recording these memories, I am recording them the least.

So here is an abbreviated Month Ten.

Dear Benjamin,

During October, you willingly sat in both your carseat and your stroller as Mama had a resurgence of mild anxiety and depression. You were eminently patient as I schlepped you from the zoo to the museum to another zoo to any place that had a firm surface stable enough to support the wheels of your stroller. The fact that I can remember so little from this month other than those outings suggests, to me, that I was in something of a desperate place that I had not been in since you first entered our lives. I probably didn’t see it as such at the time, but hindsight allows for a much more generous lucidity than can be hoped for when one is in the thick of things. Of course, the fact that I remember so little of that month is also the new normal in my previously encyclopedic brain. I used to be able to recall things like the exact phrase uttered by a character of a TV show that I watched maybe once or twice. Now my memory is more amorphous. I can still remember some obscure facts, but I forget whole swaths of information regarding what I did last week. It comes to me eventually, but I have to sit down and piece it together in a way that I have never had to do previously.

I think that October was another one of those “on the cusp” months. It was a quiet time for everyone. You were not really doing anything new, per se, and I wasn’t either. Come to think of it, neither was Daddy. But now, having lived through November and writing this letter retrospectively, I can see why. We were all on the fringes of changing completely. October was the hibernation and November was the crystalline Spring.  You entered October as a baby that could only roll about. You left November as a crawling, standing, moving child. I entered October as a slightly bored, slightly maddened hausfrau and emerged from November as a Working Mother ™. Daddy entered October in his usual harried, work-detesting self and emerged from November with a soft relaxation and a smile so bright that I don’t know if he is the same person I married years ago. So I remember October not for what it was, but for what it has proceeded.

I’ll tell you all about this in your next letter. I think you’ll be amazed at all that you have done.

Love,

Mama