Mary is eleven months old now. My baby is eleven months old and it suddenly hits me that I’m running out of babies altogether. It feels kind of like my own 24th birthday. Or like my 29th and my upcoming 34th. The milestone before the big one carries all the weight of lost youth and missed opportunities. The new age bracket hovers menacingly on the horizon, daring me to grow up enough in time to meet it. And then I turn 25, 30 or 35 and I’m over it. The actual milestone is rather anti-climatic, allowing me to celebrate like it’s any other birthday.
I went to New York for four measly days and Mary seemed like a whole other baby when I got back. Maybe I had some dated memory of her, I don’t know. But I came back to a giant-sized baby who likes to point at everything, asking, “Dat? Dat? Dat?” I returned to a baby who will hide behind a chair or her own hands to play peek-a-boo. She eats almost everything, transitions happily between bottle and breast, mom and dad, or nice-enough looking strangers. And she loves nothing more than to hug and kiss her big sister’s baby dolls, even though she is supposed to be a baby herself.
Colum was walking clear across rooms by eleven months, Irene not long after. But Mary is the only one who can speed crawl across the main floor of a house at the first sign of an open door, desperate for some water play in the toilet. She can also climb an entire flight of stairs in the blink of an eye and get on and off a low-slung sofa in our living room. She has just started to show some passing interest in walking around holding onto your hands. Third babies know if they want to get places, they’d better learn to do it on their own. And then this morning, standing up at the fridge, she let go to better manipulate some letter magnets and remained standing all by herself for several beats.
She’s into cards. Playing cards, sports cards, Pokemon cards, you name it, just as long as they are precious and dear to her big brother.
She has a keen interest in audio/video technology.
She digs bikes.
It only took me several hundred attempts over the course of a few months to get a decent shot of her on the swings. Be proud for me.
“What do you mean I’m going to have to start wearing pants?”
Perseverance is her middle name. Well, it’s not really. It’s actually Elizabeth. You just never know these days.
I had to get Mary her own cell phone. But there’s no way I’m signing up for unlimited data. Kids.
She’s becoming one of them.
Happy month before your first birthday, Mary. All of your firsts are my lasts, but I’ll try not to weep too loudly.