Dear Mr. One Tooth,
I apologize for having missed writing about your seventh month. I was busy winning the worst mom of the year award.
Just before you turned seven months on the east coast, your first tooth made its grand appearance and you began to scooch. Two months later, there is still just the one tooth (and now the other has just broken through – a tiny horizon of white ridge), and you STILL scooch. Both milestones were noticed by people other than your parents. Just before Christmas, our friend Nathen was visiting and letting you chew on his finger. He said, Hey something just grated against my finger – does he have any teeth yet? We’d been watching for days and somehow we still missed it. And the scooching, same thing. Sierra was over and said, Hey look! He just totally got himself to the end of the blanket. I’d been noticing lots of movement – but it seemed so haphazard and unintentional…
Your dad (old man as he likes to be called) and I were anxious that we wouldn’t think that teeth would be as cute as gums, but we were wrong. Your tooth is cute. Sharp too.
We love the scooching to, even though proper crawling is supposed to be really good for brain development. We’re trying not worry – a grandma we know loftily told us that her granddaughter learned to crawl in a matter of days once she started scooching – not you though – it’s been months of the same energy-consuming body drag with some help from your toes. You still look like a gunshot soldier pulling himself off the battlefield by his forearms (except for the all the grinning). And although your belly makes for lots of traction (and swiffering) you managed to get from the living room to the bedroom today. You stopped once at the closed and locked door of your sister’s bathroom. You thumped heartily a couple times and yelled “Ba?!” and then moved on. I think this may be the beginning of speech.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pe86Pxawok]
You are also really enjoying standing up holding onto something – anything – a knee, the bed, the sofa. You just really want to stand. Sometimes you just plain refuse to bend and I have to find some place for you to stand. And just in the last few days you’ve started working out your thighs with some heavy duty knee bends. You do many many sets of knee bends a day: play with toy and then drop the toy. Painstakingly lower yourself, grasp toy and stand back up. This activity gives you great pleasure.
It also occasionally leads to tumbles, because you are still wobbly. Much to your father’s dismay, I am much less vigilant about surrounding you with pillows than he is. So of course, the two times you’ve gotten hurt this week were both on my watch. I’d completely forgotten about how babies lurch towards developmental milestones with the haphazard flailing of an epileptic.
I am really sorry that you got burned with tea water! Suddenly your reach was twice as far and you were about to dip your fingers in my tea. When I jumped back from the counter, the cup flew towards us and got us both. My tough 40-year skin was fine, your delicate baby skin was not.
Ditto for the bloody nose. Sorry! One minute you were standing holding the edge of the sofa, laughing, and having a grand old time on top of five feet of blanket and the next minute you were face first on the wood floor screaming bloody murder. I picked you up quickly to console you (you’ve fallen before) and when you lifted your face I was horrified to see blood dripping out of your nose. The bleeding stopped right away, you didn’t seem to feel any pain when I touched your nose, so I nursed you back to smiles.
I will try harder to protect you from these small catastrophes. Geez – I don’t remember Bella getting hurt so much as a baby, but neither did she have so much rascally movement and curiousity. You never stop moving and you never stop pushing beyond your limits!
Love,
Mama
