Dear Noah –

Tomorrow you will be 17 months old! In fact, you’re about 2 months shy of the point when we can’t tell people how old you are in months any longer (unless they also have babies/toddlers). You’re “almost a year and a half” and will be in the range of “a year and a half” for months to come.

I’ll still be writing you these letters every month, don’t worry.

This month, your language skills exploded. I can’t keep track of all of your words any more, and you try on new ones all the time. Sometimes we repeat them over and over (you still like “sky”) and sometimes just a few times for now (tower, yesterday). Others get a little confusing — like up and down. You often approach one of us and ask, “down?” “down?” when you want to be picked up.

You’ve also started making logical leaps — this evening, you startled me by pointing to a picture of a rocket on the side of a block and asking, “airplane?” “sky?”

Sometimes you’ll say words that you’ve obviously been practicing at day care, but that I don’t think you understand yet. To clean up after a vigorous game of building block towers and knocking them over by flinging them around the room, we’ve started hurling them into your old bathtub, counting as we go. You joyfully shout “seben! ayeee! neye!” with me, but I think you’re still only counting to two — one for each hand. You get so excited when you notice that there are two of anything.

This week, you figured out that you can ask us to do things. Mostly this looks like you approaching a reclining parent and attempting to lift her head, while repeating “up! up, mommy!” Then you lead us over to the blocks, or the door, or where we keep the juice.

Just this week, you’ve had a resurgence of separation anxiety, which is so hard on both of us. Yesterday when I turned to leave the toddler Sunday School room, you sobbed and clung to me, crying and screaming. You’ve never done that before.

You did it again this morning at day care, and before that when I went upstairs to take a shower. In fact, this morning you didn’t even want to sit next to me on the sofa — you had to be in my lap, keeping me from going anywhere.

I think that for the next few weeks, we’re going to try to organize things such that I can spend more time with you when I drop you off places. I hope that will help.

In other ways, you’ve become so independent. When we get out of the car, you demand to walk, not be carried, and to carry your own backpack. You drag it behind you proudly, a big boy, self-sufficient with yogurt and juice.

I’m glad you still let me pick you up out of bed in the morning, usually putting your head down on my shoulder, knees slowly uncurling from my chest, “bayket” half covering your face. Watching you emerge as a little boy from the chrysalis of babyhood is wonderful and exciting, and I’m not ready for it.

We love you so much, sweet boy. And happy one month birthday to your cousin Max!

love,

Mommy