Dear Harper — Month Nine

You've now been out as long as you were in, give or take a few days. The real-live proof of this can be found in Lilly. Not our dog, but our former neighbor's baby, who was born on Sept. 14. Lilly's mother accidentally became pregant with her on New Year's Eve in Cuba. Yes, those things do happen, but not to you, what with your father being the Condom Baron of Frankfurt. What's a condom, you ask? Uh ... it's a party balloon. Who's the party for? Hmmm ... no one you know.

We'll have that talk for real much, much later.

We went to Austria this month, where your grandparents live. My feelings about them aside, they had a very good time with you and even bought you a little swimming pool to play in when you visited them.


And you charmed the lederhosen off of every Austrian you ran into: At the supermarket, at the lake and even atop Monkey Mountain. This is supposed to be about the age when babies show stranger anxiety, but not you. You'll reward anyone with eyes in their head with a big toothless smile, even if you had just spent the previous minutes bitching to me about the injustices of babyhood (diaper changes, clothes being slipped over your ginormous melon head, not being allowed to take a sip of mommy's beer ... oh, the list is indeed endless). As long as there are people to watch, you are a content little lady. But if boredom sets in, then you will not hesitate to break open a great big bottle of whine.


So what do we do? We carry you around, dance with you, dangle you upside down by your ankles and present you with all kinds of toys. And what do you do? You giggle and laugh ... and ignore all those freaking toys for your beloved empty yogurt cup. Someday we'll learn, with the toys that is. Luckily, most of the stuff you have are hand-me-downs, and it's not like you don't enjoy playing with them. It's just that things like frozen Freezee Pops will hold your attention for longer than any toy. For now, anyway.

Now, you might be asking yourself how we know about your love for Freezee Pops ... or not. I mean, maybe it sounds weird that we give you those things to play with. The thing is, you've been phantom teething for about the last four months. The drooling, the chewing on stuff, the waking up with what might be pain (uh, by the way, would you mind learning to talk soon? This will save you unnecssary visits from foreign bodies in your ass, namely acetominaphen suppositories), the crankiness. Oh my, the crankiness. Since we are not allowed in your mouth, we can only assume. Anyway, the Freezee Pops work wonders for a bad-mood baby. You'll suck on the plastic until the liquid inside melts, then you'll use them as nunchucks.

Lilly (the dog) is also coming to terms with the fact that you are getting faster by the day. She seeks safe haven on the back of the couch. You can do just about anything you want to her: Poke her in the eyes with your toes, pull on her ears, massage her face with your fists. And all Lilly will do is look pathetically sad and lazily move whatever body part you're working out of reach. However, we did learn this month that when it comes down to Lilly's dog food, it's better if we keep you the hell away. Lilly has a really stupid habit of shovelling food into her mouth, then dumping it on the carpet in the guest room to eat it. Unbeknownst to us, you had crawled in there one evening while Lilly was doing this. All we can assume is that you tried to help yourself to Lilly's pile, and Lilly batted you in the face with her paw. Surely not with the intention to hurt you, but still. She ended up scratching your cheek, you ended up screaming bloody murder and the dog spent the rest of the night sulking in her chair.

I suppose we can be glad that she can't put you in a headlock and give you noogies like a human sister would.

The next day you both had forgotten the incident and you were back to following each other around.

We also tried to turn you into a soccer hooligan this month when we took you to your first-ever soccer game. It was Frankfurt's second league team (FSV Frankfurt, a team that graces the last place in the league) playing against St. Pauli (the first-place team). You can imagine how that went. Since there were a lot of people to watch, you had a great time.



Sleep is kind of a disaster with you right now. In fact, I'm surprised that I am even able to write this today. You father finally got you to take a nap by carrying you around in the sling. But I'll be honest with you, kiddo: The nights have been awful. You wake up about every one or two hours. All. night. long. (All night!). We took the advice from a fellow Dec. 20 mom and stuffed you full of jarred baby food last night. It's called "Good Night Porridge" and about made me barf when I opened it up. But, you can imagine the deperation that led us to even try this stuff out. Anyway, if you believe the the sleepy-looking crecent moon wearing an old-timey night cap on the jar, this gelatinous blobby mix of milk, corn and carrots (yeah, gross, right?) was supposed to make you feel real full, putting you into a post-Thanksgiving-like coma.

Well, you only woke up three times last night. My conclusion? Uncle Hipp kiss my grits.

We can't believe how big you've gotten. When I try to hold you like a baby, I feel like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. You are probably getting close to 22 pounds and 30 inches. I can feel the baby in you melting away. What can I say? It makes me a little sad, being able to literally watch time pass.



And yet, I can't wait to see what you've got up your sleeve for next month.

Love,
Mama

This month's nicknames: Ms. Bear, Mr. Gum Gum, Boom Boom, Gummy Joe, Harper Bear, Squeaky Joe, Ms. Wobbles, Cracky

This month's song: For You by Duncan Sheik