Well hello 17.

Whew, deep breath.

Kiddo, in the last month our good friend and neighbor, whom you know as Marlo's mom and someday when you are talking will know as "Mrs. Armstrong" as in "yes ma'am, no ma'am, thank you ma'am. Can I get you another gin and tonic ma'am?" happened to link to out little site. She's got a wee little following of her own and holy moses kiddo. Let's just say a lot of people have seen your picture in the last few weeks. So I'm a little stressed about this month's post. And I might have lost a lot of sleep over it while I tried to pretend that we didn't have thirteen whole followers and eighteen comments. But we are glad they are here. I might have also lost that sleep because I had to re-ferberize you out of wanting some milk in the middle of the night. I had forgotten how stubborn you can be when you really want something because the first night you cried from 12.30 until 4.30 in the morning. It also happened to be the night of daylight savings so I can tell you first hand that nothing interesting happens at 2.00 in the morning on daylight saving's night. Nothing.

But you are oblivious to these external changes and these months are starting to meld together in that there is a sameness to a lot of days with little breaks of excitement when you do something new. For example. you will now hold up your index finger when I ask you how old you are and say something akin to, "one." I know you still have a bunch of growth spurts and developmental steps ahead but now that you've hit the big one - walking and you are slowly starting to talk the little things don't seem as big. But of course they are to you. The fact that you can say apple and point to the banana and say "Bah!" on every single page of Goodnight Gorilla is, of course, a huge deal. You are thrilled with this new word apple and I don't think I ever knew that it showed up in so many places. You will be watching Sesame Street or Caillou while I rush around doing the dishes and suddenly you will yell, "App!" and point to the screen and then repeat it over and over. And just last night you leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. A real kiss with pursed lips and a little smack. I thought it was specially for me until you also kissed the laundry detergent bottle this morning.

You are learning to press your parents' limits. We have forbidden you to play with the fireplace because you have nearly succeeded in pulling the cover off of the fireplace. We don't like that brass cover either so maybe you are just sending us a message to redecorate already. But now you sidle up to the fireplace and when we say, "Luke. No." in our most impressive low parent voices you simply place your finger on the fireplace and then slowly smile at us. The smile says it all, "I'm not playing with it, I'm just touching it. You didn't say I couldn't simply touch it." How is it that you are splitting hairs at seventeen months? It reminds me of the part in The House on Plum Creek when Laura and Mary roll in the haystacks after their Pa said they couldn't jump off the haystacks.

Those are the funny moments. The not so funny moments are when you throw all your food on the floor while looking me in the eye and laugh. And then I get you out of your high chair and you proceed pick up the food you just dropped on the floor and throw it over the baby gate. Those are the times when it is all I can do not to start screaming not because you haven't eaten - I'm getting used to your hunger strikes - but because it seems so disrespectful. I know you don't really get that I breaded those chicken strips and then fried them to perfection just for you. This is too much to ask of you, I suppose, but you clearly get that you are doing something wrong and you are getting pleasure out of making me want to cry. Those are moments when I do not like being a parent. And you won't get that until you are a parent.

In school you have moved up from the baby's Honey Bee room where you were clearly the biggest kid on the block - as evidenced by your class picture populated by seven babies and then you, lounging in the middle of the group looking very cool and grown up. In the toddler's Tator Tot room you eat your snacks at a little table with all the other one year olds and take your nap on a cot. I am not sure I can conjure up anything more completely adorable than you sleeping on a cot. I keep asking your teachers to take a picture of this phenomenon because I cannot wrap my head around the fact that you sleep somewhere without bars and you don't just get up and walk around the room.

Now that you are with bigger kids you are coming home with more battle scars. The other week you came home with a cut under your eye that made you look very badass. Apparently some kid scratched you when you took his toy. I tried to find some sympathy for you but honestly, you took the kid's toy and you shouldn't have done that. It is a funny thing having a boy. There is this part of me that wants to protect you from everything, even from yourself, as you attempt to go down the stairs without me or try to crawl through the dog door but then I think maybe you have to learn how to stand up for yourself. Would feel the same way if I had a girl? And then I wonder sometimes if I don't protect you enough. Are you scared at play group sometimes because some kid has tried to pull your hair? I hope not.

Your other big news is that we moved you downstairs into your new room; the room that you will most likely occupy until you leave for college. It is bigger than your old room and I think you like the space because you spend a lot of time running around it. I was a little bit worried that we might have missed the window for you to transition to a new space and that we would have to wait until you were thirteen but you fell asleep that first night in your new room without missing a beat. So now your father and I have the entire upstairs to ourselves again in the evenings and let me tell you, it's a little strange. I didn't think I would miss your presence, your little sleeping presence just across the hallway, but I do. I have this overwhelming urge to go and check on you in the evenings because you seem so far away.

This last week has been really difficult. Your dad has been in Hawaii for work all week and it's been just the two of us. You are growing four new teeth at the same time, are on the brink of another ear infection and have generally been in a contrary mood. You even had a breakdown at Little Gym, which never happens. This has been more than a little challenging for me, someone who often times has very little patience with motherhood as it is. I've really had to look hard to find the good and charming things about you. I drive around with Kanye West's Stronger on repeat even though most of the lyrics are not an anthem to parenthood. However, "that what don't kill me will only make me stronger," strikes a chord when you throw your fifteenth tantrum of the day.

I know this sounds terrible, but it's true. There is this wonderful video online about being a mom and there is a line that says, "Motherhood . . . it's the best there is, and sometimes it's the worst." The whole video makes me cry every time but that line runs through my head many times a day because it is so true. Raising you has been the hardest thing I have ever tackled in my life. So I wake up everyday mustering my wits and I keep coming back to something you recently started doing when I get you dressed in the mornings. After I have wrestled you into a diaper, pulled a shirt over your head and managed to get some pants on you, I stand you up and you wrap your little arms around my arm to balance as I put your shoes on. It is such a tiny brief moment in the day but it never fails to make me smile; those tiny skinny arms wrapped around mine. It gives me the strength to go on and tackle everything else.

You are Sixteen Months Going on No.

Another month. Another few milestones. Another few moments of soul aching loveliness. Another few reasons to burrow my head in the pillow and scream in frustration.

You have unfortunately discovered the word no and consequently you say no to everything; even things you actually like. Even when your dad and I nod our heads and enthusiastically say, "Yes!" you shake your head right back and say, "No!" But it's more like, "Ney," with a twist of whine thrown in for good measure. I grit my teeth and try to be zen about the fact I have years of this in front of me although the no's are not nearly as frustrating as the collapse to the ground move you make when you don't want to go somewhere. I have watched this maneuver for years in other kids and dreaded its appearance because there is nothing more fun than gathering up a heavy writhing mass of toddler who doesn't want to go somewhere.

The weather around here has been unseasonably, unsettling, warm. The tulips have been working their way out of the ground for weeks. I would love nothing more than to wake up to find a foot or two of snow on the ground but you are still in love with the driveway and all of the delights it offers so I've made an uneasy peace with forty degree weather in February. I bought a kid's snow shovel for the non existent snow and for a few weeks you would carry this shovel everywhere. A friend joked that while I fretted you didn't have a special blanket or stuffed animal you had instead bonded with a plastic snow shovel.

The shovel also accompanied us on walks around the neighborhood. This phrase, "walks around the neighborhood" sounds much more impressive than the reality. Your idea of a walk is to stop every three steps to examine a blade of grass, pick up a stick, pat the fire hydrant or shove a rock in your mouth. Our walks are accompanied by a relentless barrage of "et's dat?" "et's dat?" "et's dat?" and I describe telephone wires, houses, driveways and fences to you. It is tiring but I feel so guilty if I don't tell you for the hundredth time that that object you are so curious about is a tree and that a tree grows branches. But every once and while you put your hand in mine and we stroll down the street together and those are moments that you imagine all of parenthood will be like. As a parent I know now that 98% of parenting is nothing like you expected but that 2% makes all those no's and tirades over nothing worth it. To feel your hand gripping mine as we walk down the sidewalk is even more endearing than those first times you squeezed my finger when you were an infant.

You are really into animal sounds now having added cow, horse (hey!) monkey, and sheep (always a whispered baa) to your list of sounds. This past week after a trip to the zoo you also learned elephant (a loud screech) and lion/tiger/bear/any loud animal (a near silent roar.) You love to ride your rocking horse and slap your stomach for giddyup. You also rub your belly instead of your chest for "please," which is hilarious and incredibly endearing. You figured out that I let you do some things if you ask nicely so you use it for everything - getting me to open a door, asking me to let you out of the supermarket shopping cart and reading you another book. When I finish reading the book you immediately make the sign for more. This just about kills me seeing you carefully touching your fingers together making a sign I started signing to you when you were about six months old. I honestly never thought you were ever going to get it.

For as much as you are always on the go, you love to lounge. We got a kid's chair for you to sit in when you watch Sesame Street and I think you love having a chair of your own. As bedtime approaches you start throwing yourself on blankets and pillows and against my shoulder sighing and smiling and pretending to sleep but as soon as we ask you if you are going to sleep on the floor you pop right up ready to read another book or throw another little person down into your Fisher Price castle dungeon. Your dad thinks it is funny that there is no right of due process in Fisher Price land.

All of these seem like large accomplishments but the largest and the one that came with the most drama was giving up your bottle. OK, I have to admit that you still get a bottle at 5.00 in the morning, which is the only way you sleep past 6.30. But you gave up your pacifier over a year ago and you haven't, as I mentioned above, really bonded with anything like a blanket or animal (despite my best efforts to make you love your lion) and unless you were way down the tantrum path there was nothing that a bottle couldn't make better. But you are getting ready to move into the Tater Tot room at school and apparently you cannot have a bottle there so we embarked on this journey, which took weeks and weeks. And weeks. And a lot of deep breaths. And wine.

My first attempts to get you to drink out of the tilty cup were enough to make me okay with you moving off to college with a bottle clamped firmly in your teeth because you lay on the floor and screamed for 20 minutes straight. Props for endurance. But then I started to notice you would not put up a fight of any kind if I simply handed you the cup while you were watching Sesame Street. Yes, I am probably contributing towards your obesity and sheer laziness when you are 15 but it worked. There are plenty of times when I put the cup on the floor and you literally spin around so you sit with your back to it and then every time you sneak a peek to see if it is still there you let out a howl of protest but I just ignore you and walk into the other room. And then I hear you pick up the cup and slurp away. Victory.

So you don't take a bottle anymore when you go to bed at night, which means that after we have gone through our ritual of a bath, pajamas, tooth brushing, book reading, kissing dad good night and waving goodbye to Buddy, we go into your room and turn off the light and turn on your ocean wave sounds and I put you on my lap to sit for a bit before I put you in your crib. Some nights you wiggle around and cry a little and it takes a long time before you find a comfortable position and then I rub your back for awhile and whisper, "I love love love you," in your ear. Other nights you just lean against me and it's the leaning nights I love best of all. I'm not going to lie to you. I thought I really loved you when you were born. And I thought that I loved you even more as you grew and started smiling at us and even started crawling towards us or saying Mama or Dada. But it is when you lean against me at night as you are falling asleep that I cannot quantify my love for you. My head swims and my heart swells and I marvel for the millionth time that you are this imperfect and yet, perfect, little person and you are ours.

p.s. You are famous. Sort of.

Fifteen

Perhaps I should be in a better mood as I write this since it is 5.30 in the morning and you have reverted, once again, to waking up at 3.45 in the morning demanding a bottle. I was too tired this morning to let you cry it out and instead gave in. And gave in again at 4.30 when you were up again cheerily greeting me with an uh-oh as I searched in the dark for your bottle. I think of you as a fairly good sleeper but these constantly changing wake ups drive me crazy.

Let's move onto other topics shall we? You are 15 months old and in the last week or so you seem to have put your temper tantrums on hold, if only temporarily. Sure there are a few meltdowns everyday but you seem somewhat happier. You climb on everything. You are so close to being able to climb on the couch by yourself; a prospect that dismays me to no end. You throw your hands up to signal a touchdown no matter what sport we are watching on television. And when you take a swig from your sippy cup you exhale with a soft "Haaa," instead of a resounding "Ahhhh." It is absolutely hilarious and you do it over and over to make your dad and me laugh. You are so annoying sometimes but so much more of a little person and engaging than you were just a few months ago that it makes you a lot more fun to be around.

Your newest love is walking up and down the driveway. This delights you to no end. I drive the car up to the garage and get you out of your carseat and set you on the ground. You get so excited that you stamp your feet and laugh hysterically and then you head over to the very dirty snow and proceed to eat it. Or you inspect some ice. Or you watch the water coming out of the drain pipe. I will walk down the driveway and look back and you look so tiny dwarfed by the car and the garbage cans and the house. Inside the house you fill up your spaces but outside I can see you for your actual size in the world and you are so little it startles me and twists my heart.

Christmas was a whirlwind of activity. Your aunt Emelie and uncle Isaiah and cousins Avery and Birch all drove from California through the night to get here at 7.00 in the morning. It was so exciting to answer the door and find them all on the doorstep. The house also filled up with your grandparents and your Aunt Anne and Uncle Tommy and resembled a three ring circus for a few days as you all played with your new toys and went sledding. You absolutely loved sledding and in the days since our first attempts you have gotten better and better at sitting on the sled and not falling over as we pull you around. I think that might be your favorite part of the endeavor. Your father and I got you a bike for Christmas, which you seem to like, but you like eating snow even more so going down the block is a slow business as you stop every foot or so to swing your leg over the bicycle seat and get some more snow to shove in your mouth.

We made another trip to the ER this month after you cut your eyebrow open on a cabinet handle. This trip was not nearly as awful as last year's. For one, the injury wasn't as bad. You were laughing and charming all the nurses by the time we got to the ER and for two, I think your dad and I are getting a little better at this parenting deal and able to take things in stride a little better. Yeah us! Thankfully no stitches were needed. Or rather the doctor told us if we cared about a scar we could get stitches but if we didn't they could just clean out the cut. We chose option B and headed home. I hope you won't hold that against us years from now.

You continue to be a chatterbox. I will pick you up from day care and be told that you spent the entire day saying, "hot." You also say hat, head, bye, ball (more like bahl, which is also your word for bottle) and make little animal sounds when prompted. What does the chicken say? Bah-bah-bah. It is so cute. You also make b sounds when prompted by Sesame Street, which makes me feel better about plopping you down in front of the television for an hour every day. When I read you Good Night Moon, you put your finger to your lips and say, "shhhhhh" pages before I get to the old lady whispering hush. Sadly, your concept of shushing doesn't extend to actually being quiet when I ask you to pipe down in the grocery store.

When you get hurt you refuse to be held. This is frustrating for me because I just want to make you feel better but I can understand it. When I get hurt I get really mad and don't want to talk to anyone either. But when you aren't angry or hurt about something you are getting so much more affectionate. If I lie down on the floor you immediately come over and pull up my shirt and blow raspberries on my back. You are very business like about it and it is so funny. You come walking over periodically as we are playing on the floor to fall into my arms and give me a kiss or a hug. When your dad comes home at night you get so excited that you toddle down the hall as fast as you can to find him. He bends down and stretches out his arms and you walk over arms outstretched to give him a hug. Then you back up a few feet, stamp your feet in excitement and run in for another hug. And another and another. It just kills me.

14-are all teens this hard?

A year ago you were just a teeny tiny two month old and now look at you. Actually, you were not so teeny at two months. Back then you were still in the 80th percentile or so for weight and now you are hovering around the 25th percentile. You have stretched out and you have these small legs with perfect little calf muscle that are so strong. The only part of you that is very big is your belly and that's only after you've eaten and it is quite rotund and quite hilarious.

You can now point to your belly when we ask you, "Luke, where is your belly?" You pat your stomach and rub it carefully and proudly, like a satisfied eater. Then we ask you were your nose is and you always point to our noses instead. And last night you correctly identified your feet. It is so exciting and sweet to see you actually putting words to objects. Some days you don't say mama at all and other days it's mamamamamama and nuhnuhnuhnuh, which seems to be your word for pay attention to me or I'm irritated about something. I can sometimes feel your pain but I have to be honest and say it's incredibly annoying too. Being at the grocery store with you writhing around in the shopping cart whining nuhnuhnuhnuh makes me want to tear my hair out. Patience is not a virtue that your mother possesses.

You also don't let us read you books anymore. You want to do this on your own. I will start reading a book and you will yank it out of my hands and immediately start turning the pages, studying the pictures and babbling to yourself. I treasure the rare occasion when you stand next to me, hand on my arm, supervising as I read a book to you and recall when you were just a teeny tiny baby and I used to put you on the floor on a blanket and read Lord of the Rings to you and you wouldn't protest at all.

You are walking about 90% of the time. The only time you crawl is after you've fallen and need a walk to climb up so you can resume walking around. But even that is coming to an end as you are learning how to stand all by yourself from a sitting position. You love to walk from the living room to the kitchen to your room and back. I only wish it was summertime so you could walk around the back yard because I think you get bored with your walking circuit. But no matter, you are walking! It's so amazing to see. I was sitting at Little Gym the other day with your friend Claire's mother and we both marveled to see all of these little kids walking around like little people. I can clearly remember when you and your friends were barely moving around the big red mat just learning how to crawl and now you are all moving in a hundred different directions.

You have spent a good part of this month growing some new teeth, which has been a real struggle for all of us. Your teething combined with your ever growing frustration with all the things you cannot figure out yet plus all the things I won't let you do is sometimes more than I can handle. There have been lots of blocks, Legos, Fisher Price little people, books and other toys thrown in outrage. Lots of back arching, wailing and rolling away during diaper changes. Sometimes I just have to walk away because I don't know how to deal with your temper tantrums and other times I feel compelled to pick you up and hold you because it has to be really difficult to be 14 months old and on the cusp of so many things. It must be hard to be able to wave and say buh bye but not be able to fit Legos together. There are so many things I wish I could help you with but you have to figure them out on your own.

The holidays are coming and Christmas is just a few days away as I finalize the post. Last year you were still so little that Christmas with you didn't feel like as big a deal. It was sweet but you really weren't doing much. But you are so much more grown up this year and so much more a little person that everything feels so much more Christmassy and I feel like sometimes I can barely stand the sweetness of it. I have faltered singing Christmas songs to you in the car and nearly started to cry picking up your first bike the other day. Your very first bike that will be waiting for you on Christmas morning under the tree. I hope you love it. I hope you love all these traditions we are starting to create with you. I hope that you'll love It's A Wonderful Life as much as your father and I do. I know that someday you'll roll your eyes at having to go pick out a Christmas tree with your parents but I'll remember this year when we went to the tree lot and you walked around in your snow boots and your bear hat and sat on the ground trying to eat peanut shells and looked at all the trees surrounding you. And I'll remember going to your first Christmas program and seeing you on stage in a little angel costume staring at all the bigger kids singing Christmas carols. I'll remember standing there smiling and laughing at the sheer cuteness of it all surrounded by parents with cameras and video cameras and feeling so fully like a parent. Those are memories of Christmas I hope I'll remember for a long, long time.

13. Enough said.

Your first birthday seems like it was two years ago instead of just one month ago. Time felt like it contracted and slowed down to the speed of caramel dripping in the last month. Maybe it is because we have been through so many crazy weather patterns that it doesn't feel like a mere month has gone by - snow then beautiful Indian summer days then frost warnings then warm again. Fall has finally come and gone but did so with the most gorgeous display of leaves I've seen in years.

You seemed to sense you turned one and decided that a few days after your birthday you would announce with great fanfare the arrival of the Temper Tantrum. Sure you could be fussy and whiny and twisty when annoyed but you have now taken your temper tantrums to a whole new level. These entail throwing yourself on the ground at the slightest provocation and screaming your head off or crying hysterically. They extend into the middle of the night when you wake up mad as hell that you aren't getting the bottle you think you need and you throw yourself around the crib like a fish out of water wacking your head against the rails and giving yourself little bruises. These tantrums are sometimes amusing but a lot of the time frustrating and distressing for your parents. What happened to our relatively sweet tempered happy child? Many many discussions and emails with other parents later, we have figured it out: you are one and there is nothing we can do about it.

But the month hasn't been all bad, in spite of the fact you decided to wake up nearly every other night around 1.00 or 1.30 or 2.00 and cry for hours on end. (We finally invested in some ear plugs and great god they are awesome - you will read this someday and be appalled that we wore ear plugs so we didn't have to listen to you but you will also have a child of your own someday and then realize why we did it.)

We dressed you up as a little polar bear for Halloween and you looked unbelievably adorable. We all stayed home and watched the Utah game and handed out candy, which is my favorite part of Halloween. It was a much better Halloween than last year when you were still screaming through the night. The downside to Halloween was that it signaled the end of daylight savings and we gained an hour. My whole life I have enjoyed this additional hour and now it's ruined. I think every single one of my parent friends agreed with this assessment because Facebook was filled with status messages like "So and So hates daylights savings." "So and So has been up since 5.00 am and I am going to die." The extra hour was brutal for everyone. You were up at 7.00 but it felt like 6.00 to us. You took a horrible nap and woke up at 12.30. This meant we had seven hours until you went to bed, which felt like 7 million hours. In desperation we went to the Zoo at 3.00 in the afternoon and rode the train for the first time. You absolutely loved it and laughed hysterically the entire ride.

But the biggest news is that you are walking. When I started writing this post this afternoon you had taken five steps at Little Gym that morning, your highest total to date. Until today you still cruised around the edges of everything and lunging forward to the next stable object to grab onto. But in the last few days, you had started to cautiously step out into the ether where there was nothing to grab onto. But you got up from your nap and Claire and Abby and Gwen and Chloe and their moms came over to kill a few hours and you actually walked. You took about ten definite steps with about half of them this adorable side step. Valerie and Amy and I all cheered and clapped and it seemed sweet that they were to see you achieve this huge milestone because they've known you since before you were crawling. And then after they left you tried out walking again. And again when your dad got home and we cheered some more. You look more and more pleased with yourself as your worry about falling seems to fading rapidly.

So I am trying to really fix in my mind how adorable you are when you crawl because you won't do it for much longer. You have been a champion crawler since the day you finally figured it out. You are so fast that sometimes you trip over your hands in your haste to get somewhere and your little bottom swings back and forth and when you are excited you laugh hysterically as you crawl towards something you want.

Thanksgiving is a few days away and last week at Little Gym your teacher asked us to tell everyone what we were thankful for about our kiddos. I was first and so I blurted out how thankful I was for all the ways you have changed my life for the better. But your dad and I are thankful for so many other things about you. We are thankful for your wonderful laugh and your smiles when we play with you. We are so glad you are healthy most of the time and seem like a pretty happy kid. We are thankful for the big kisses you give dad when you go to bed at night, for the hilarious things you do like wiggling into our laps when we read to you. We are thankful for you making us into a family. Everything seems sweeter and more poignant and more achingly joyous this year with you in our lives.

One Year. 365 days. 12 Months.

No matter how you spin it we now have a one year old. You, our little bear, are one year old and oh how our lives have changed in a year. I used to drive around and hardly ever glanced in my rear view mirror - I'm really more of a side mirror kind of girl. I used to use salad spinners for their intended purpose, along with strainers, wisks, kitchen bowls and tupperware containers. Empty gatorade containers, egg crates and toilet paper rolls just went into the recycling. I used to walk from room to room without a thought in the world about shutting a gate behind me and used to walk up stairs without viewing them as a) dangerous or b) a way to kill time letting you climb them. I used to leave papers and remote controls on the edge of tables and never thought about the contents of a kitchen drawer.

No more.

However, in return for all of these sacrifices and so much more, we have you. Luke, you are the best kid. Sure you still don't sleep through the night on a consistent basis and you have started throwing the most hilarious temper tantrums when we dare to take anything away from you. (Just for the record: you go from sitting to throwing your face to the floor and sliding your legs out and moaning and crying for a minute or two before you realize that we are not going to give whatever we took away from you.) But beyond those minor/major irritations you are a funny, sweet, adorable, wonderful little boy.

You babble all. the. time. You talk through books, while you are playing, in the car, while you are eating, watching television, sometimes when we are drifting off to sleep and it is so cute. You still won't name animals when I ask you what a cow says but you do say "uh oh" when you drop things and at other random times that don't usually call for an "uh oh." You also seem to be getting the idea that we actually have names - mama and dada and you sometimes identify us correctly.

You are getting closer and closer to walking, cruising along the sides of everything - couches, chairs, cabinets, the fridge, your toy boxes, your crib, the wall and anything else that will hold you up. You have started to briefly let go of your supports and sometimes stand on your own for thirty or so seconds before you realize you are standing, dislike the sensation and sit down and crawl away.

This month you also got really sick. This was far worse than any cold you've had and we finally figured out that you had a double ear infection but not before your temperature soared to 102, you threw up all over me (an experience I had been dreading but found far more miserable for you than for me) and you spent three sleepless nights crying and fretting and worrying your parents to no end. We spent a lot of time on the couch watching Sesame Street because the television seemed to be the only thing that would calm you down. You would just sit and lean your overheating little body against us. After a week of feeling miserable and missing day care, Little Gym and playgroup you seemed to be on the mend. It was a long week.

But thankfully you got better in time to make a quick trip to Moab with us for our friend Megan's wedding. It was held along the banks of the Colorado River in the morning and you had a blast playing in the sand. You crawled all over kicking up clouds of sand in your wake leaning your head down sometimes to lick the sand much to our chagrin. In the evening we went to the reception where you sported your cousin Avery's seersucker suit. It warmed my preppy heart. After dinner the three of us danced on the dance floor under the stars, your dad and I holding you close and you threw your head back and laughed and wiggled trying to dance your own little baby dance.

A week later we celebrated your birthday with a lot of people. I invited nearly 40 people never thinking that everyone would come. They did, which I guess is a tribute to what an awesome kid you are. Thankfully it was a gorgeous fall day and we all sat outside and ate the amazing food your dad made and we laughed as you ate your birthday cupcake and I looked around the backyard and it was full of people who were all there to celebrate you. I often think of the four of us: you, your dad, Buddy and me as this small, but perfect, little family. But in reality our circle is so much bigger and all those people sitting in the backyard on that perfect October afternoon were a reflection of how much you have brought to us, your father and me. We love you so much and cannot wait to see what the next months and years bring.

11! 11!

The house is very quiet except for the hum of the dehydrator, which runs day and night now drying out all the peppers your dad grew this summer. It is quiet because you started day care a few weeks ago and seem to be loving it. I was quite weepy the first day I dropped you off, which surprised me considering how excited I was to have some time to myself. But I dropped you off fearing the worst, hovering on the edge of the room waiting to see you start to cry and it never happened. I should have known better. So I told you I loved you and headed back out to the car where Buddy was waiting. He accompanies us to and from day care and you start laughing every time I carry you out to the car and you see him sitting patiently in the front seat waiting for us to go home. But I sat in the car that day and cried. And then I went home and my ears rang in the silence.

But you seem to, by all accounts, love day care. When we walk in all of the teachers say, "Hi Lukey!" in their soft lilting Spanish accents and you smile at everyone. When I pick you up in the afternoon - and discover yet again that you have failed to nap or taken another 45 minute nap in the span of seven hours - you come crawling across the floor towards me as fast as you possibly can laughing and gasping to tell me all about your day. I can hardly wait for the day when you can actually tell me about it. I suppose by then you will not be nearly as excited and your answers will be more like, "Nothing," "I don't know," and "Maybe."

It is the first day of fall here so I am a few days late on getting this post up. The air turned cool on Monday and the leaves are turning in the mountains. I remember how fall came while I was in the hospital having you last year and now here we are staring down the last month until your birthday. In the meantime, we have many other birthdays to attend since it seems that all of your friends in play group and Little Gym were born within a week of one another, with a few outliers in August and then of course you, bringing up the rear as the baby of the group.

In the spirit of fall, we have taught you how to throw your hands up in the air when we yell, "Touchdown!" It is one of the first things we have attempted to teach you that you have actually done. So much of your learning comes from you going at it alone. You have figured out how to roll over, crawl, stand up, side step along the side of the couch, pull all of your books out of their boxes, throw your food on the floor and pull it out of your mouth, climb the stairs, push your walker, pull the night light out of the wall, slip your arm through a sleeve (the cutest thing in the world), pull wipe after wipe out of the dispenser, and hold your bottle all by yourself. But this is something we taught you and it clearly delights you to see us laugh so we are hoping you will thrown your arms in the air when we go to the Utah football game this Saturday and not cry when an entire stadium roars.

You and I headed to California again at the end of August when your dad left for his long-awaited and much-anticipated trip to Alaska to fish. Someday he will tell you all about the beautiful river he fished and all the fish he caught and someday we will all go fishing by the ocean in Alaska. But this trip he took with friends so we headed to California to see Avery and Birch, Emelie and Isaiah and Nan and Charlie. We went to the California State Fair and had corn dogs and saw lots of livestock and maybe in a few years we'll go back and you can go on some rides. You had a wonderful time playing with your cousins, each day you all played a little more together although a lot of your time was spent looking in awe at these big kids running around while you played in the Fisher Price mecca that is Nan and Charlie's family room.

You are starting to put things together now, which is so incredible to watch. You can stack blocks on top of one another, something that a month ago you still hadn't really mastered. When the blocks fall down, as they invariably do, you say, "ee-ah," which I think is a pre-cursor to "Uh-Oh." You really like the sound of it because you often crawl around saying "ee-ah, ee-ah, ee-ah," over and over. You can also now sometimes line up the holes on the blocks with the pegs on your wooden train. When you cannot, you get really frustrated and try to push the blocks onto the pegs without regard for where the holes are. Your frustration also manifests itself whenever I take something away from you that you want. You sit and bow your head and push your hands into the floor so that your back bows out and you yell or cry and throw a little fit because suddenly you cannot do what you really wanted to do. It is exasperating and humorous all at once.

You babble and talk a lot of the time, but you are particularly chatty in the mornings after you have had your bottle. You lie in my arms and stare out the window and whisper your talking sounds and I respond and you consider the changing leaves out the window and talk a little more and this goes on until you are ready to wiggle off my lap and start another day.