letters for levi: 11 months old

:: eleven months ::

This has been an amazing month. You have grown so, so much - not just in height and weight, but also just in the way you interact with the world and understand your surroundings.

I'm convinced that you understand nearly all of what we say these days. It really is amazing to give you instructions ("please sit down") and see you follow them.

One of the biggest changes is your talking! Even though we've been saying for a while that you're a big talker, now I'm thinking that we had no idea what we were saying. The amount of "talking" you do now seems like a thousand times more than just one month ago. You pretty much talk from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. You talk to us, you talk to friends, you talk to strangers, you talk to yourself, you talk to objects, the walls, imaginary friends, angels… who knows. But regardless of anyone listening, there you are talking non-stop! It really is just gorgeous and hilarious.

You started to get your 5th tooth this month too. It started with a week of pretty awful teething including fever, cold, diaper rash, and all the rest of it. And then finally a little tooth appeared. It seemed to move up and down a bit for a week or so and then finally poke through right around your 11 month birthday.

sick boy - boo.

We've had a total of eleven plane rides on our trip to America. It's such a long way to go but you did amazing. You love looking out the window and impressing all the flight attendants with your beautiful smile. It is getting harder the more active you become - but it helps that you are at such a fun age and you're often very content to just fidget around and play.

Although you've not had a solid routine in weeks now due to all of our traveling and activities, you've done so well and adapted beautifully. You still take two naps a day - usually around 1.5 hours each - and sleep from 7:00pm to 7:00am. It's not always that much, but that's on an average "good" day.

You're eating more "adult" foods all the time - many of the same things we eat. You have days where you gobble up purees quickly and happily, but then have other days where you want nothing to do with being fed and only want what you can feed yourself. You're getting very independent!

Lately you've been absolutely captivated by dogs. Every time you see one your eyes light up and you start bouncing up and down and squealing.It's super cute and we hope to get a dog one day. We'll see. :)

You play peekaboo a lot (you initiate it) and you love to wrestle. You get this grin on your face and do a relatively quiet high pitched scream/squeal thing and that is your indication that you're ready to rumble. You also love to be chased and you're figuring out how to zoom cars around a little bit.

Although you've always seemed to love reading books, now you will sit by yourself and read a story. You turn the pages and look at the pictures. You also sometimes bring me a book and then try to pull up to my lap. It's so much fun to have you communicating more and more and telling me something like that. ("Read a story to me please mama!") I love it.

A few days ago (on Christmas actually!) you took your first steps. You took about three steps and then fell over. We're convinced that you could take more if you wanted to since your balance seems great, but you're more interested in moving fast and---right now---crawling is definitely your fastest mode of transportation. You easily transfer between furniture, stand up next to walls, and move fast around objects your size. One of these days you'll be running all over the house… very soon I think. But yes, you'll now take a couple of steps if encouraged by us.

One of my favorite things you've really started to do this month is that you've become quite a little dancer. You bounce up and down whether you're sitting down or standing up. or sometimes you just bob your head or rock it back and forth. But whatever way you do it, when the music comes on you get your groove on! Most times all it takes is me humming a few lines of a song and there you are - getting your groove on. I love it. LOVE IT.

Speaking of music, I know I've mentioned this before, but you love, love, love music. Anytime it's on you take notice, even if it's just a commercial. When you are around live music the whole world fades into the background and you zone in completely on what's being played. You seem to almost always stare at the guitar and be most interested in it. So…

You got a tiny little guitar for Christmas this year from Gigi and Gramps! It's the cutest thing - a little wooden guitar just your size. You LOVE it and can sit for ages doing nothing but pluck those little strings. It will be interesting to see if this is just a phase or if you will indeed turn into a little muso.

And speaking of Christmas… what a great time we had in Oregon. You got to play in the snow for the first time, enjoy your first Christmas (and got loaded with loot from our family!), have lots of play time with Gramps and Gigi and Uncle Andy and everyone else, had a dedication at Westside Church… and you had lots of time in fuzzy flannel footy pajamas. It was a glorious time!