Eleven Months

Dear Lila,

My little baby is eleven months old!  Four weeks from now you will be turning one, graduating from being a baby to (gulp) being a toddler! 

Smash, Bang, Boom!  These have become very familiar sounds in our house.  You love smashing and banging on things with your hands -- the mirror, your highchair, the toilet bowl, the wall.  The louder the noise, the happier you are!

Baby Babble  You have become a lot more vocal these days.  You speak your little gibberish and love blowing bubbles with your drool.  We haven't heard any real first words yet (you seem to say this a lot, baba babbba bbbbaaaa), but we're listening and we can't wait to hear them.  My bet is on "Randy! No!"  as I seem to say this to Dog-Dog (aka Rodney Randall Sully Sullivan) about a trillion times a day.  He has too many names to list, and it's all part of the reason he doesn't listen to us.

Hi Lila!  You have been waving hi, and it's so frickin' cute!  You have a somewhat delayed reaction to it, which just makes it even cuter.  You still aren't clapping, but that's because I think you like smashing things instead. 

Push and Pull  While you still love to cruise the furniture, you recently discovered that if you push your little toy stroller it moves, and so do you!   Look out world, we have an emerging walker!  Something that you LOVE to do is pull all of your toys and books off your bookshelf.  All of them.  You seem to have such a blast doing this, but I don't find it to be nearly as amusing as you do -- because I am the one who has to clean up the mess.

Gymboree Class  I don't have many friends in LA who have kids (they all live in Boston or NYC), so the only way for us to meet other babies is to join classes or go to the park and stalk other families.  You and I started a Gymboree class a few weeks ago.  The first class was a disaster, and you ended up crying.  I think you were over-stimulated.  It was too loud, too bright, and had way too many older kids.  In other words, it sucked, BIG TIME.  I gave it another try this past week and it was so much better.  You warmed up to the teacher and the environment.  There were more kids your age, and thank goodness, no tears.  My only gripe with this Gymboree class was a kid with his deep chesty cough.  I kept you far away from him and his germy ass.

I'm sure the next few weeks will just fly by, and before we know it our little girl will be one.  Until then, we want to savor every last second of you being a baby.  We love you Lila!

Happy eleventh month birthday!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy