Dear Grayson —
Happy first Thanksgiving! This year, we are thankful for smart, strong, active, inquisitive little you.

This was a frustrating month for you, little guy. You are so, so ready to get moving. You roll and rock and wiggle your way all over every surface. When we hold you (and right now, you prefer being held to not being held), your top priority is to go…somewhere else. You don’t usually know or care where — you just want to GO. And once you get there, wherever there is, you decide on a new someplace else to try to reach. (Daddy says you are hell-bent on getting from Point A to Point B…without crawling.)

Sometimes, what you really want is to be suspended by a parent in mid-air within reach of a playmat AND a pillow AND the dog, while also still being within reach of the parent for when you feel like twisting back for a quick snuggle. That parent, right now, is often me. Mommy-only phases are pretty rough on your primary caregiver, kiddo. You’re gonna need to go easier on him.

You almost never wake up where you went to sleep; we usually find you crunched in a corner. Everything is out of your crib except two lovies and your robot blanky. Once I walked in on you lying on your belly, playing with your monitor — you’d turned on the nightlight but not yet turned off the monitor (same switch, other side) — your inconvenient mobility/dexterity could no longer be ignored.

We’re lowering the crib soon, too.

You cut your first tooth this month! And then you cut your second one right next to it. Once both of them pushed through, you were in a much better mood and the amount of drool in our lives decreased dramatically for about a week. We’re pretty sure you’ve got at least one more coming in now, though, because drooooooooolllll…

A couple of weeks ago, you started working on consonants, beginning with a mostly silent “puh” sound moving into a not-at-all-silent “MAMAMAMA.” (This sparked a furious campaign for “DADADADA,” at least during business hours.) The jury’s still out on whether you know what “mama” means, aside from knowing that it’s good for expressing a complaint of some kind. We haven’t heard it recently, though. Sometimes, it seems like you’re learning so many things at once that you need to set some of them aside and come back to them later.

You are still crazy about the dog. Sometimes, all he has to do to make you laugh is sigh heavily, which isn’t a lot to ask of him. And when he races around the room (whether chased or unchased), you’re completely entranced. This, for the record, is the very best time to try to deal with your fingernails…which is still a struggle, even when you’re pleasantly distracted.

To say Rodney is crazy about you in return would be an overstatement, but he seems to have accepted responsibility for you as part of the pack.

We took you on your first road trip this month so we could spend Thanksgiving with Nana and Papa. Traffic was minimal and we made excellent time, not that you appreciated it. You are still categorically opposed to car seats and anything else that requires you to be still. You snoozed for a while (we timed it that way on purpose in both directions), but then you screamed from Folsom to Fresh Pond and all the way down the Kingsbury Grade…and for roughly the same periods on the way back. Good times! We’re sorry, buddy. We’ll try to make it easier next time, but the truth is that sometimes we have to sit in the car for a while. It’ll be better when you can read or otherwise better entertain yourself…probably.

You know what comes with road trips, though? Luggage. And you know what comes with luggage? ZIPPERS. Zippers, stickers, and laces were excellent distractions for you on this trip. And we needed some distraction, because you’re a creature of habit and your exersaucer wouldn’t fit in the car, which seriously cut into Daddy and your daily routine.

Also, traveling completely blew up your sleep schedule. There were missed naps and more night wakings and increased general whining…but you were still pretty cheerful most of the time.

After you hit six months, we started offering you some solid food. Daddy was afraid that might be the end of bottles — you’ve been lunging for our food for so long that we were sure you’d stuff your face when given the chance. Turns out? Not so much. You hate rice cereal on its own but will take it mixed into a bottle. You’re warming to bananas. You’re not sure about sweet potatoes. Green beans were a non-starter. I peeled a Fuji apple and cooked half of it for you on Thanksgiving — you didn’t care for the cooked bit, but you chewed joyfully on the uncooked half I tried to eat before dinner. (You come by that honestly — I hate most cooked fruit, with the sweet, sweet exception of applecake.)

You may hear, later in life, that I was excessively strict about what solids you were fed and when. We’ve been going slowly, for sure, and we truly don’t think you need sugar or salt or high fructose corn syrup at the ripe old age of 7 months — there’s plenty of time for that. The truth is, though, that you just don’t care all that much about Big People Food, and you don’t have to for a while yet. You’re pushing 20 pounds at 27 inches on breastmilk alone, and that’s totally okay.

Love,
Mommy