Dear Harper — Month 13

This has been kind of a weird month with you, little clone. A few weeks ago, you suddenly seemed different. Both your father and I noticed, but we couldn’t quite figure it out. Had you put on weight? New hairdo? We eventually realized that we’re watching you grow on fast-forward and holy shit, that’s just crazy.



You have mastered the skill of climbing off of furniture, on your belly, legs first, which means we can’t really keep you anywhere. Once you get sick of us, you literally slither off the couch or bed and crawl away from us. Usually to Lilly — poor, ever-suffering Lilly. All my predictions about her life becoming a living hell have become true, because you love Lilly the only way you know how: with lots of energetic hugging and petting. And now you can get to her in her most precarious of hiding spots: On top of the back of the futon in your room. You share your food with her, and you have no problem letting her bite off half of your cookie, then eating the rest yourself. Sometimes you’ll have second thoughts and you’ll retrieve food you’ve given her out of her mouth. Yes, Harper, we let you do this. And when we give Lilly a plateful of table scraps after dinner, we don’t do much to stop you from joining in.

We’ve long since had to keep Lilly’s food and water in the restroom (see, that sounds odd … not the fact that the poor dog has to eat in the can, but the use of the word “restroom.” See, it’s not a bathroom, because there’s no bathtub. Just a toilet. Guess I could say toilet room. Or, if I want to be true to your Midwestern roots, crapper. But I digress), where you like to keep her company when she eats. Mainly you like to splash in her water dish. Or you like to steal pieces of her food and crawl away with it in your fist. Lilly’s a tough case when it comes to eating, anyway, but her this never bothered us until we found ourselves with a human vacuum. Lilly will take mouthfuls of food out of her bowl, only to dump it out somewhere else for her dining pleasure. This “someplace else” happens to be the room where your tons of toys live. So we do our best to keep Lilly alone while she’s eating, and that is, sadly enough, only possible when we shut her in the shitter.



But then you sit outside the door and cry when we do that, so we’re kind of screwed no matter what we do. Lilly is, as your daddy says, your BFF. Or, as you call her, “Dede.”

It’s becoming more and more possible to actually interact with you, in that you actually respond to some of the things we’ll say. If asked where Mommy, Daddy or Lilly is, you’ll (usually) point to the right person (yes, we’ll count Lilly as a person). You’ll also slap your belly if I say, “Belly Baby” to you. Don’t know where I got that from, but it does have a high amusement factor. You’re also into waving good-bye, and I never thought stuff like that was all that impressive or cute before, but when you do it, it is. It’s heart-meltingly outstandingly a-fucking-dorable.

(And now you’re thinking: Geez, Mom. I’m only 13 months old; could you lay off the dirty words? And I'm all like, "Hells no, kid. Get used to it." And then you: I already am, bitch.)

Christmas came and went in a blur for me, since I came down with something that made me feel very hideous on Christmas Eve, but I do seem to remember that you really, really got the hang of opening gifts. A few birthday gifts arrived late, so you probably started to think that all of December and part of January is your birthday. And while it’s not all you got for Christmas, you did get your two front teeth this month. You have yet to bite anyone, though it does add the thrill of danger to breastfeeding. I’ll be honest with you here: I never thought I’d be nursing for so long. And you do actually try to get into my bra all by yourself now, just like I said I would never let happen to me, no way. Eh. I think you could fill a canyon with everything I thought I knew about parenting pre-you. I’ve caught myself wondering if it’s normal that you still want to nurse so much, that you need to be nursed to sleep and often at night. But then I know that there is no such thing as normal. It’s normal for you, and that’s fine for me.



But despite all that booby time, we can literally see our baby slipping away from us, turning into a real-life toddler. I’ll admit it: It makes me a little sad. Then again, every new month with you is so much more fun.

Love,
Mama

This month’s nicknames: Gum Gum, Baby Bear, Baby Boom Boom
This month’s song: Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan.