Eleven Months

I don’t know how to say this without sounding smug, but Colin has become impossibly charming. He never really bought into “stranger anxiety” (though enough to check it off the milestone list. Check!) and still mostly just beams at everyone. Also, he applauds their simple existence and their presence before him. He has these giant blue eyes, curly blonde hair, indefinable cheeks, and a wide, still toothless grin that is completely irresistible. That kid is going to be spoiled rotten, that much is clear even now. Who could resist?



This month saw a dramatic increase in Colin’s desire to move. Really go places. And he is not satisfied with only moving on the ground either. He tries to climb, he walks everywhere as long as he can keep one hand on something, he slides beneath obstacles and squeezes between chair legs. He has missions, many each day, and he carries them out with a combination of concentrated intensity and hysterical joy, furrowing his brow while he screams with delight. It is the most hilarious juxtaposition and never fails to elicit a round of laughter from the room. Which, of course, prompts the mastermind himself to turn around, grin, and clap.



Colin has reached the stage of infinite discovery. He drops a block while playing with it and – eureka! – he has invented throwing! While eating lunch, he mixes his lasagna and his strawberries together and – voila! – he has invented cooking! My favorite discovery without question, however, has been of the use of language. This month a light bulb flicked on in his head and he suddenly understood that all that squawking I do and all the mumbling Patrick does is actually on purpose and is meaningful and that he can do it too. It is incredible to participate in this, one of the most useful and empowering lessons he will ever learn.

Each interaction with him is now a cacophony of sound. I talk and sing and he babbles and squeals back at the appropriate times. How did he learn how to do that? I don’t think that I would have picked up on that from listening to my whiny voice all day.



His new favorite word, and mine as well, is “Mmmmma! Mammmma! Mama!” And, though I would like to think that it is because he finally has a sound to assign to me, his loving Mama, it is much more likely that he is amused by the immediate and prolonged clapping and squealing that those sounds elicit from me. It never ceases to crack him up, and it never ceases to make me grin like a fool.



People tout the common thought that babies “discover something new everyday” but it’s never been more true than now and I find it humbling to watch a complete but entirely naïve little person discover the world for the first time. Getting down on the floor with him, looking at what he sees, but through my more experienced eyes, is at once inspiring and distressing. For the first time, I feel a real sense of urgency to better our world, his world, so that, when he is old enough to know, he will not be disappointed.