Love Letter - Three

Dear Jayden,

You are a mover these days! You learned to crawl just over 2 weeks from your 11 month mark. And you get faster and faster every day! Today you turned 11 months old on me even though a teeny part of me is not ready for you to grow up. The rest of me though is anxiously devouring every little minute with you, taking in all your sounds and gestures.

These days you are waving at everything including inanimate objects like the wall, the door or a tree. But more and more, you appropriately wave bye-bye as people leave. We all get a kick out of it.

Lately you've been pretty attached to your momma and although it may be frustrating for others, I love how needed you make me feel. And I remind myself when I start feeling frustrated that this is a season. Soon you will be headed out the front door to college.

I love how closely you examine everything that comes across your path. Your Nana is pretty convinced that you are going to be an engineer or maybe an accountant like your momma! You are very into details. It's so amusing to me how you will find the teeniest tiniest little fleck on the floor and just sit there and inspect it before carefully trying to pick it up. I realized today that I probably don't have to worry about you eating something you shouldn't because by the time you decided to put something in your mouth that you shouldn't have, I would be aware that you have something you haven't seen before! (Don't worry though we are still constantly jumping at everything you put into your mouth - typical first-timers!)

Something else that is so cute is how you drink from a straw. You've never taken a bottle or a sippy cup but you love drinking out of a straw! As it seems with most other things, if daddy or momma is doing it then you want to too!

You'll pick up your cup, take a drink and then fling it to the side like you never want to have anything to do with it again before reaching for it 5 seconds later to take another drink. I always laugh.

I have one more month of babyhood with you and I will drink it in. But in all reality you really don't look like a baby anymore, other than the wonderful baby chunk. But that will soon be gone as you continue to move yourself wherever you want to go. You have 7 teeth and when you grin it looks like you have a full set of teeth. You have a full head of little boy hair, no longer is it baby hair. You wear big boy clothes, more often then not you are wearing a t-shirt and pants or shorts rather than a snapped onesie. And you have little boy mannerisms - from the way you place your hand on one leg and the other hand on the wheel of your train as we steer you around to the way that you feed yourself your own food at the dinner table, I know my baby Jayden days are soon over.

But my love for you grows every day and it will only grow stronger and more determined as you grow stronger and more determined.

I love you my baby Jayden! Happy 11 month old birthday!

Love,
Your momma