You've gone two months without pictures, too?

I'm sure the last ten weeks of Valerie's life merit more than a few words and a handful of snapshots, but alas, this is what you get. (As usual, you can click on any of the pictures to go to our flickr photostream and see more pictures, or to see other sizes.)

Beginning of October: Valerie is becoming very dexterous, and gets into things we might leave unattended, such as enormous slurpees.



Middle of October: First trip on the train to visit cousins Nick and Timothy in Vermont. Surprise visit from Auntie Nan while we were there.







Late October: We all got sick. Pretty sure it was the swine flu, but we didn't get tested. No pictures of that. You're welcome.

Halloween: Valerie was the cutest barista on the block. And she got to have her first ever chocolate bar.





Early November: Played in PopPop's leaves. Devoured her first hotdog at the church hay ride.





Mid-November: Valerie took her first steps and figured out how to climb the play structure and go down the slide all by herself. GA/PC Day on Mama's back.







End of November: Thanksgiving. Visit from Grandma. Put up Valerie's first Christmas tree.



Beginning of December: First time walking on snow!

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Breaking out of the holding pattern

Well, it's been over two months since my last post. Perhaps I should have kept up with the monthly birthday letters - at least it gave me an excuse to post once a month. Sigh.

I really feel like I've been in a holding pattern for the past year and a half. Take Valerie's bedroom, for instance. I was supposed to have two weeks of maternity leave before she came, maybe more, since first babies are always late, right? But she came three weeks early, and I had no buffer time to prepare myself, my life, my house, my world, for her arrival. It's all a terrifying and beautiful blur, those first few weeks, and then, before I really started to get my bearings as a mother, Jeremy lost his job, and I had to go back to work, and the blur resumed. It was only supposed to be temporary, just until he found something. And nine months passed, in that holding pattern. Nine months. That's longer than I spent pregnant.

Then, once he did find a job, I found myself having a hard time trusting that it was really for real. And I couldn't bring myself to quit my job, just on faith. Four more months.

I finally bit the bullet and picked an end date. Cashed in my stock options, and quit my job. Sixteen months after Valerie was born, I finally get to stop saying goodbye to her to go to work. And I'm having a little bit of a hard time believing that I'm really done. (So is she - she's been more clingy these past few days than she has been in months.) I'm not waiting for anything anymore, and it's a little unnerving. Especially since now, I get to deal with all the stuff that kept getting bumped down on the priority list by more immediate demands.

Which brings us back to Valerie's room. No curtains on the windows, no decorations on the walls. Barely a walkable path from the door to the crib. A jumble of things I need to deal with: curtains to hang, outgrown clothes to sort and label, our old TV to set up somewhere, a desk chair to clear a space for in our room. Yeah, don't even get me started on our room. I think it used to have a floor.

I'm trying to be realistic. I know it's going to take a fair amount of time to undo sixteen months of neglect. (Actually, more like two years - I wasn't an overly productive pregnant woman, either.) And, let's be honest here, a good part of the problem is quite simply me. I'm a procrastinator and a clutter collector who is much more likely to wile away a few spare hours watching a dumb movie or reading blogs than being productive. I recognize that. But usually, I can at least keep the chaos to a bearable level. It would be nice to regain a tiny bit of control. But then again, I am the mother of a toddler, so maybe I shouldn't dream such ridiculous dreams.

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Mommy Friends

I have a confession to make. I'm having a really hard time making friends with other moms. It's not for lack of trying. I join playgroups, I join online meetup groups, I make walking dates and playdates. But here I am, over a year into motherhood, and I can count the number of other moms that I would call "friends" on one hand. With several fingers left over.

I guess I imagined that becoming a mom would fling me headfirst into the mommy world, and I would miraculously fit in. But it didn't, and I don't. I get together with other moms, and I find my normally ebullient self shutting down, and slipping into outside observer mode.

It's hard to talk to other moms. We have this one, enormous thing in common. Parenthood. And it's a rather enormous field of subjects, so we can occupy ourselves for hours simply on that one topic. But that may be the only thing we have in common. And "mommy-talk" really gets to me after a while. If we talk about the good things, it comes across as bragging. If we talk about the bad things, we open ourselves up to unsolicited advice, or, worse yet, that also comes across as bragging. Sometimes I feel like parenting becomes a competition, one way or the other. Whose child started walking the earliest? Who got the least sleep last night?

And it's almost impossible to talk about parenting choices with other moms. I've made a fair number of "alternative" parenting choices so far, and I'm sure there will be more to come. Babywearing, cosleeping, gentle discipline, cloth diapering, baby-led weaning, extended breastfeeding, selective vaccinations. And I honestly enjoy discussing these types of issues, and the thought processes that go into making these types of decisions. But it's almost impossible to have those kinds of discussions with moms who have stuck to the more "mainstream" choices. I actually talk about breastfeeding more with my single, male friends than I do with other moms. I suppose because other moms are too close to the issue. It's hard to have a stimulating intellectual discussion about something that you are in the middle of living. When you're too close to something, "I chose not to do X because..." sounds an awful lot like "You are a bad person because you do X." It's a bit easier if you manage to find a mom who agrees with you on something. You state your view, with enormous relief, because you can't say it to anyone else, and she responds, with equal relief, because she's been dying to say the same thing. But it's not a conversation that goes anywhere. You vent, you agree, the end.

I go through phases where I just want to give up entirely on making mom friends. I usually enjoy myself more with my pre-mom friends. Talking about the rest of the broad spectrum of non-parenting-related subject matter. Playing games. Hanging out. But as much as I enjoy myself with my non-mom friends, there is this enormous part of my experience that they don't understand first-hand. Becoming a parent redefined me, redefined my world-view, redefined my priorities. Other moms can understand that, and that's an immensely valuable connection to make. Being friends with other moms is important for precisely the same reason that it's hard: motherhood is so close to our hearts.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say that I know how mommy relationships should be, and all those other mommies out there are doing it wrong. It's more the opposite, actually. From my "outside observer" stance, it seems like mommy friendships are genuinely working for other people. I feel like a kindergartner who got bumped up to high school math because she knew how to do polynomial equations. I feel like I don't belong here. I just want to go back to my play-dough.

On the bright side, there are one or two other kindergartners that have been bumped up as well, and we can build play-dough pizzas together while solving those polynomials. And it seems like there are a few high school students who, against all odds, like play-dough too. And even though I know I'm taking the analogy too far, it's not all bad. Confusing as all get out, but not all bad.

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Thirteen Months Old

I had pretty much decided that I was going to stop doing monthly letters after Valerie turned one, but I was still somewhat up in the air until the date of her thirteen month birthday came and went without a birthday photo shoot. That sealed the deal. Monthly letters will now be replaced by annual letters. Or maybe semi-annual or quarter-annual, while she is still little and changing so frequently. I haven't decided for sure.

Since this blog is my lazy parent substitute for a baby book, however, I am still going to bore you with milestones and such. Valerie's 13th month was a big one for language development. She is quite the little chatterbox, and every day, her chattering sounds a little more like real words. She knows that the dog says "oof", the cat says "mao", the tiger says "warr", the trucks go "voom", and the elephant says (I can't type it, but it sounds like a trumpeting elephant, I swear). I'm a little disappointed in myself for caving and teaching her the stereotypical animal noises, but she learned dogs and cats on her own, and our board books have lots of pictures of animals to identify, and very few pictures of classic rock bands to identify. (Note to children's book publishers: Make that book. I will buy it.)

She still points at things and asks "wuhs da?" and I am now confident that I was not giving her too much credit last month when I said I thought she was saying that. She's a smarty, and I shouldn't have doubted her. She now says variants on window, outside, trees, dog, more, book, duck, doll, door, and light, in addition to mama, dada, nana, no, yeah, uhoh, hi, and bye. (I may come back and edit this list later, as I remember words I have forgotten.) She also started using the sign for "eat" this month. Oh, and the other day, as we were getting ready to go out, I said "let's go", and she repeated "let's go", clear as a bell. Which is why I have stopped watching R-rated movies with Valerie on my lap. (Although I am still resisting the whole "made for babies" genre of annoying television/movies. We've just been watching more family-friendly movies, with fewer repeatable words that start with "F".)

And no, she is still not walking yet. (Which someone seems to ask me about every single day.) I am quite okay with that, too, since she seems to be more than making up for it by being ahead of the curve linguistically, and she's hard enough to keep up with crawling and climbing and cruising. I still haven't found the time to baby-proof the house, yet. It guess it's like fixing the leak in the roof - You can't fix it while it's raining, but it doesn't leak when you could easily fix it. Something like that, anyhow.

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Educational Toys for the Modern Child

Valerie has a lot of toys. I don't know how it happened. I think I've bought her a grand total of three toys (two of them second-hand). I'm pretty sure they reproduce while we are sleeping.

Some of her/my favorite toys are her Melissa and Doug toys. They tend to be good quality, and they lean more towards the "children should play with toys, toys shouldn't play for children" philosophy that I hold. (Which, I will admit, is partly motivated by my philosophy that toys shouldn't annoy parents to death.)

That said, Valerie has a couple of Melissa and Doug toys that I wonder if they fully thought through...

1. The Corporate America Shape-Sorter



This birdhouse has four doors, in four different shapes, and four different colors. It also has four birds, in four different shapes, and four different colors. The child is meant to match the round, red bird to the round, red door, the triangular, blue bird to the triangular, blue door, etc. But here's the catch: the birdhouse and birds are both plush. So you don't have to match anything, you can just squish the square bird into the round hole, or whichever hole you feel like making all of the birds use, regardless of their individual attributes. A perfect training tool for future CEOs.

2. The Kidnapper Training Peg Puzzle



It's a puzzle where you can remove one finger at a time from a pair of hands, what more can I say? The fingers are conveniently labeled for ease of reminding children, "No, take the pinky from the left hand first, that's the finger they are least likely to miss." Special bonus feature: Remove all but one finger to teach your child practical hand gestures for use while driving!

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This one is just for the Doctor Who fans

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More Birthday Pics

For my picture-happy followers, here are a few more shots from Valerie's birthday party.

In her birthday dress, which she wore until the eating part of the party:


Rubber ducky cake, by Erin:


Close-up:


Trying to show her how to blow the candle out (she didn't quite get it):


Eating her cake - what a pro!


Happy after finishing the first piece (she eventually finished the whole thing):


Handy tip: I generally post more pictures on Flickr than here, so anytime I post pictures, if you'd like to see more, click on a picture, and it will take you to my Flickr page.

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Twelve Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are 12 months old, now! One whole year. Wow. Just wow.

This month has been a very exciting one for us. The first, big, exciting thing that happened was that your dad finally found a job, after many, many months of looking. He started his new job the day before our big, family vacation, so you and I had to leave him behind, and go on our vacation without him. We had a fun vacation, even though we missed Daddy a lot, especially when it was bedtime, and I had to put you down without his help, and you were squirmy and fussy and didn't want to sleep.



We went to Vermont for your cousin Nick's second birthday, and we got to see Grandma, and your very pregnant Aunt Alana and not-very pregnant Uncle Eric. You cried for a large percentage of the long car trip there, though, and neither of us was too eager to get into the car again for the next leg of the journey. We managed it eventually, though, and spent a lovely week camping with mommy's friends from college. You had fun with Reggie, who is only a few months younger than you, and you got very, very dirty crawling around the campsite. It rained a lot, and mommy didn't get to play as many games as she usually does on the camping trip, but it was a fun trip nonetheless.



After camping, we spent a few days with Phil and Rachel visiting some friends in Western Massachusetts, and then came home, exhausted, to start getting ready for a visit from Grandma and your first birthday party. (I'm going to include your birthday party in this letter, even though it technically took place a few days into your thirteenth month, because it seems more relevant here.) Your birthday party was a lot of fun. There were about fifty people there, and lots of rubber duckies. My friend Erin made a really neat rubber ducky cake for you, and you absolutely loved it when we gave you a cupcake with a candle on it. You were mesmerized by the candle, and a little bit disappointed when we blew it out, but you got over your disappointment quickly when you realized that it was food.



Between Daddy going back to work, vacation, party preparations, a visit from Grandma, and Mommy switching her work schedule over to evenings so that you can stay with Daddy while she is working, it's been a pretty crazy month as far as routines are concerned. Not that we were ever really great about routines before, but we were starting to do a little better right about when everything went crazy. You're still not entirely sure what to make of it all, and you have become extra clingy and snuggly this month. I don't blame you, though, I'm feeling pretty out-of-control lately, too. Things should settle down soon, though. I hope.



Developmentally, you didn't have a lot of "firsts" this month, but your physical skills have been progressing quickly. You've become very adept at pulling yourself up on things, and you're proving to be quite the climber. You love climbing the stairs, and climbing over any person who is silly enough to lie down beside you. One day, you climbed up on top of the trunk that we use as a coffee table, and I realized that we were going to have to do a whole lot more baby-proofing to keep this house safe for you! You also love walking if someone holds your hands, and cruising around the pool in your floatie boat, where buoyancy removes your remaining barriers to mobility.



I'm stuck on one milestone for your baby book, though. You love to talk, and you babble all the time, and you repeat sounds we make and words we say. So how do I decide what your "first" word was? How do I decide when it wasn't just repetition, when it wasn't just a sound? You say "Dada", and "Mama", and "Nana", and you attribute them to the correct people. (Sorry PopPop and Grandma, your names just aren't easy enough to say, yet.) You love finding out what things are, and you often point at things in order for me to tell you the word for them, which you will then attempt to repeat. Sometimes you point and say "wuh" or "dat", which I think is your way of asking "what is that?", but I may be giving you too much credit. You don't repeat things perfectly, but you come pretty close, and you have even repeated complex phrases like "fuzzy d20s" with reasonable proximity. That's a pretty geeky first word, and awesome on so many levels.



When we were camping, you started to say "oof" when the dogs went by, and a few times, you even said "daw". You have figured out which of your books have pictures of dogs in them, and you will go searching for the dog pictures, then proclaim, "oof!" when you find them. When we were visiting friends with a cat, you learned to say "mao", although you still prefer to call every four legged creature "oof".



You definitely learned the word "no" this month. I told you several times not to put rocks in your mouth, and then one time, you were holding a rock to put in your mouth, and you told yourself "no". You say "no" a lot, mostly when you are about to do something that you know Mama would say "no" to as well. Sometimes, you say "no", then don't do it, which gets you lots of praise from Mama. Sometimes, though, you tell yourself "no" as you are doing the forbidden act, which just leads to more no's. (And I thought testing boundaries was supposed to be a two-year-old thing...) So maybe "no" was your first word, since it was the first one that you learned to use contextually that wasn't onomatopoetic or truncated. But then again, you started using the sign language word for "milk" contextually when you were nine months old, which is not only a much nicer word than "no", but it's in another language! That's much cooler. (Upon further thought, there are a few other words that you use in context. "Hi" and "yeah" come to mind, but I expect there are others, too.)



With your newfound mobility, you have become quite independent this month. You're always crawling away to get into something that I didn't quite manage to put away high enough. You love to pull all of your toys out of their boxes as soon as you are given the chance, but you frequently will go over to your bookshelf first and pull out half a dozen books, and then sit, with them all surrounding you, open to various pages, and babble to yourself contentedly for ages, moving back and forth between the books in some pattern known only to you. You love books, but you prefer to read them to yourself, and will hardly ever sit through an entire reading of a book if I am reading it to you. I guess the problem with Mommy reading books to you is that I read them only one at a time, from front to back. How frightfully dull of me.



You're starting to associate similar items with one another. You know that I talk into my cell phone, and one day, you handed me my cell phone, said something that sounded like "talk", then giggled happily when I pretended to talk on the phone. Later on, you did the same thing with a vaguely cell-phone-shaped block, then amused yourself for ten minutes by handing me more "phones" to talk on. You have also become fascinated with the idea of a comb. One day, you were holding your comb, and I showed you how to use it, and a light went on in your eyes. Since then, you take any comb-shaped object (small blocks, pieces of chicken, etc.) and rub it across your hair. It's adorable. Except maybe when I am cleaning the chicken out of your hair at bath-time.



You are usually a very happy baby (except when you are fighting sleep). It's easy to make you laugh, and when you laugh, it is with absolute abandon, the way only a baby can laugh. You're quite ticklish, like your mom, which is great fun. You love when I shake my hair in your face, and you will ask me to do this by shaking your head at me with a big smile on your face. You also love it when I pop out from behind doorways, and will shriek with terrified joy when I do. You love kisses, but you don't seem to have quite worked out how to give them yet. When you want to give me a kiss, you will open your mouth as wide as you can, then smash your face into mine. Cute, but perhaps not the best technique.



I love watching you grow, and even though I don't always have as much energy for you as I would like, I love to play with you and watch you learn. I love you very much, Valerie, and I know you love me too, even if you show your love with open-mouthed head-butt kisses. Every day, you teach me a little more about joy, love, patience, and gratitude. I'm a better person today than I was a year ago, thanks to you. More sleep-deprived, but better. I'd say that's a fair trade.



Love,
Mama.

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This is not Valerie's birthday letter

Two weeks ago, Jeremy started his new job. Nine months of unemployment was a long haul, but it is finally over, and he seems to have found a great job that he loves. Unfortunately, he started his new job the same day we were meant to leave on vacation, so Valerie and I took our family vacation without daddy. And can I just say that, for as much as I complain that he doesn't help around the house enough, spending ten days without him was HARD. Valerie is a good baby, but she's active, and it's nice to be able to hand the reins to someone else when you're feeling tired, or want to play a game or have some adult conversation. It also reminds me how blessed Valerie is to have had him home with her for most of the first year of her life.

Somewhere in my mental "to blog" pile is a weekend at my sisters', a fun but very rainy camping trip, and a visit with some friends in Western Massachusetts, Valerie's 12-month birthday letter, and lots of pictures that I can't figure out how to upload until Jeremy gets home tonight.

Frankly, however, I'm not feeling much up to blogging all of those good things right now. I'm feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, between trying to unpack and unwind from an exhausting vacation, and trying to get ready for a big birthday bash this weekend. These past few days have been very emotional for me, too, because I've found myself dwelling on the negative aspects of Valerie's birth. When she was a few weeks old, I remember telling people that all the crap fades into the background once you have your baby home and in your arms. But anniversaries are odd creatures, in that they make you focus on a specific point in your memories, rather than the generalities. "One year ago today, I was just finding out that I had obstetric cholestasis and was going to have to be induced." "One year ago right now, I was puking from the cervadil and feeling like I wouldn't make it through the night." "One year ago right now, they were telling me that they were going to keep my baby in the NICU." "One year ago tonight, I was crying myself to sleep, alone in a hospital room with an empty womb, but no child in my arms."

I suppose it's good on some level to remember those moments, to acknowledge the deep emotions that I felt at the time. But I feel bad to be spending energy on negative feelings in the middle of what should be a joyful time of celebration. I suppose that's the way it works, though, the reason why the Christmas season has the highest rate of depression. It doesn't pay to focus on what you "should" be feeling. Right now, I am feeling tired and sad; that's what is, regardless of "should". So it might take me a few extra days to get around to writing Valerie's birthday letter.

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Eleven Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are eleven months old, now! It has been a really busy month in the Wakeman household. So much so, that I am tempted to cheat and write your birthday letter in point form, interspersed with pictures. (Just like I did last July, when I was also too busy to write proper blog updates.)

Your physical development this month was astronomical. Once you realized that you could get around, you decided to see how much more your little body could do. You learned how to transition from crawling to sitting (June 10), and at some point, you started getting around on your hands and knees, instead of just your belly (although I don't know the exact date, because it was such a gradual transition). You pulled yourself up to a standing position for the first time on June 12, then promptly fell on your butt, cried, and didn't pull yourself up again until June 25. You love standing, though, and you'll even take a few steps if someone holds your hands.



You've always had books that you liked to chew on, but this month I think you really discovered that books have content. You love being read to, and you love reading by yourself. (You'll turn the page, say "Oh!", then turn to the next page, and say "Oh!" again. It's pretty cute.) You're trying really hard to talk, too. You mimic us all the time. I don't think you know what you're saying, but you will echo the general sound of whatever we just said, and you're getting closer and closer. (Although we stump you sometimes when we sneeze or hiccup and you can't figure out how on earth we made those noises.) Your three main words right now are "doe" (like "door" without the ending), "beu" and "geu" (like bird and girl without the endings). You don't seem to use your words to consistently refer to the same things, however, so I'm not 100% what you're trying to say. You may just still be trying out noises, but you do seem to consistently like these particular noises.



You are so much more exploratory this month, and the downside is that you'll do things like crawl over the top of your potty and do a faceplant on the other side. Then you'll cry. I've tried applauding when you fall, I've tried pretending to ignore you when you fall, I've tried laughing when you fall, but nothing seems to stop the impending tears. The only thing that helps is a great, big mommy-snuggle. So I've resigned myself to the fact that it's natural for you to be upset when you fall down, I'll snuggle you for a few minutes, then you'll squirm away and get back to your exploring. You're a pretty resilient kiddo.



Hmm, maybe I will do that point form thing after all.

First proper trip to the shore. Cape May, NJ. The gnats were really bad, and it was windy. You weren't a fan of the ocean (but I probably didn't introduce you to it gradually enough).



First trip to the shore on a proper "beach" day. Ocean City, NJ. We rode a surrey on the boardwalk. You loved playing in (and eating) the sand, but you had mixed feelings about the ocean. You were giggling hysterically, but clinging to your parents for dear life. I think you'll like roller coasters. You also met your twin second cousins for the first time, and had a lot of fun trying to keep up with them.





First Camp Meeting. Delanco Camp, NJ. I grew up going to a church camp every summer, and was starting to feel really nostalgic about my camp this year. So I found a camp on the Internet, and we went on a wing and a prayer. God blessed our efforts, and gave us an amazing week at a camp we loved and hope to go back to again.



Four teeth in one week! #5 on June 15, #6 on June 16, #7 and #8 on June 22. You saved the top, front, center teeth for last, which actually made you look strangely older to me, because you looked a bit like a kindergartener who had lost her two front teeth, rather than a baby who is getting them. I was hoping this run on teeth would mean we would get a break from teething for a few months, but you seem to have started the molar-chomping already. Sigh.





You continue to be a joy, both to us and to our friends and extended family. You don't always want to go to other people right away, but you will smile broadly at almost anyone, and you'll usually warm up to new people eventually, and allow yourself to be held. It's all about gradual transitions with you; you're not a "rip the band-aid off all at once" child. Sometimes, I start to get impatient with this gradualness, because I am totally the kind of person who dives in the deep end. But I have learned to appreciate that you always come around in your own time. You teach me new things every day, and I love how much richer my life is as your mother. You are a beautiful blessing, and I am so glad that you are my baby.

Love,
Mama.

Valerie's Wish List

Several people have started asking me what to get Valerie for her birthday, so I did what every good geek does and made an Amazon Wishlist for her.

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Iron Baby Marathon

So, at Valerie's nine-month check-up, they pricked her toe and tested her iron levels. It was 9.8, which meant nothing to me, but apparently it's slightly on the low side. The doctor said she wanted it to be at least 11, and suggested that we give Valerie supplements. Knowing that constipation is a common side effect of iron supplements, and not wanting to further exacerbate a problem that Valerie was already dealing with, I asked the doctor if we could just make sure she gets more iron in her diet. She smiled knowingly, and warned me how difficult it is to correct an iron deficiency with diet, but said that she would let me try, since 9.8 is low, but not dangerously low. We made a follow-up appointment for six weeks later, and went home and read everything there is on the Internet about iron-rich diets.

(If you ever happen to be in this situation, I'll save you a bit of googling. Start here, for the basics. Then go here for a detailed drill-down of the nutritional content of every edible thing in the universe.)

The first thing that hit me when I was doing my reading was how many iron-rich foods are associated with the opposite of constipation. Dark leafy greens, beans and legumes, bran, PRUNE JUICE. Prune juice is high in iron? Did you hear that, pregnant women around the world whose iron supplements are causing you gastrointestinal distress? Dietary iron solves both problems at once! Constipation can also be a symptom of an iron deficiency, so it makes sense from a homeopathic perspective that iron supplements often cause constipation. Like cures like, and all that. If you need the iron, supplements may fix the problem, but if you don't need them, then they can cause the problem. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this.)

All the more resolved not to give my baby iron supplements, we set to work on making sure her diet was as iron-dense as possible. We gave her beef and turkey meat (dark meat is best). We gave her all kinds of boiled greens (she loved the kale!). We gave her lentils and beans. We continued to give her sweet potatoes and avocado and broccoli, which were already some of her favorite foods. Since we are doing baby-led weaning with her (a finger foods approach to introducing solid foods), we gave her these things straight up, cooked until tender when necessary, but not blended into rice cereal or anything, and not spooned into her mouth. It was up to her to choose from all of the lovely, ironful options and eat herself healthy. If you're a control freak, then I don't recommend this method. But if you can trust nature to do its thing, then it's great. The theory behind it is that babies will give their bodies what they need, so if they need iron, they will choose to eat foods with iron. And Valerie did. She didn't like everything we offered her, and one day she would eat a whole leaf of kale only to ignore it completely the next day and go for the sweet potato instead, but overall, she seemed to be doing a pretty good job at filling her belly with the right kinds of things.



Today was her six-week hemoglobin check, which was probably in the appointment book as "prove to this crazy mom that she can't possibly feed her baby enough red meat to raise her iron levels and write her a prescription for iron supplements." And honestly, I wasn't even convinced that iron-loading Valerie's diet would have done the trick, and I was just hoping that her iron levels would have at least stayed the same, and not have gone down. I knew we had done our best, and I was happy to have discovered the many health benefits of prune juice if nothing else. The nurse took Valerie's blood, then went into the other room to check it. We could hear her exclamation of joy through the walls, and the doctor came in and told us that it had gone up to 12.2! Hooray for overachieving! I have to tell you, the best words in the world to hear your doctor say are, "Keep on doing what you're doing."

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A few tips and tricks for parents who might want to iron-load their babies' diets:
-Make sure you give your baby a mix of heme and non-heme iron, to increase absorption. Vitamin C also improves iron absorption, which you can get from all kinds of melon. Just cut finger-shaped strips of ripe melon for the baby to gnaw on.
-Edamame (soy beans) are soft enough to chew without teeth. I was able to get them from Trader Joe's pre-cooked and pre-peeled, and I would just give them to Valerie cold. (Pictured in the center of Valerie's tray in the above picture.)
-Roll anything slippery (like avocado or fruit) in wheat germ. It makes it easier to grip, and adds iron.
-Prune jello jigglers! It sounds silly, but this was one of Valerie's favorite iron-rich foods. Just sprinkle a packet of plain, unflavored gelatin on top of 1/2 cup of cold prune juice. Let it sit for one minute, then add 1/2 cup of boiling water and stir for a few minutes until completely dissolved. Add one tablespoon of blackstrap molasses (also high in iron!), then pour into a small rectangular dish (I used a Chinese take-out container) and refrigerate overnight. Cut into little rectangular cubes for the baby to enjoy! (Pictured on the right-hand side of the above picture.)
-Prune pancakes! Pancakes are a great finger food for babies, because they are soft and gummable, but firm enough to pick up. I prefer to make pancakes from scratch, but when I am feeling lazy, I use an "add water" mix. But I add prune juice instead of water! Valerie loved her prunecakes. Sometimes, I would mix some wheat germ or cooked greens into the batter, too, for added iron. (Pictured on the left-hand side of the above picture.)
-Big beans, like kidney beans, worked great on their own, but Valerie had a little more trouble picking up little things like lentils (which I really wanted to use, because they had the highest iron content). So, I made a yummy baked lentil dish (from the More With Less cookbook), then I mixed the lentils with some sushi rice to make little patties that she could pick up easily. I wish I had thought of rolling them in wheat germ, too, that would have been perfect.
-I never got around to trying this last one, but I will once my avocados ripen! Seaweed is very high in iron, and a friend of mine suggested making baby-sized California rolls with just avocado in the middle. What a great idea!
-Do you have any other ideas for iron-rich finger foods? Share them in the comments!

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Ten Months Old!

Dear Valerie,

You are ten months old now! This month seems to have completely flown by. Maybe it's because it was such a busy, eventful month. Or maybe it's just because I took so long writing last month's birthday letter.

Unlike last month, this month was full of milestones. You cut your third tooth (May 16) and your fourth tooth (May 29). It's funny, because you have four teeth now, but none of them meet in the middle. Tooth number three came in on top, but off to one side, and tooth number four came in on the bottom, but off to the other side. It's not funny in a bad way, though. It's funny in a really unique, adorable way.



You learned how to clap this month (May 26), and you take absolute delight in the attention you get when we clap for you, and you clap back to us. You've gotten quite efficient at crawling on your belly, and you'll even rock up onto your hands and knees and almost crawl a few times before dropping back to your belly and settling into the method you know works, for now. You've also learned to transition from a sitting position to a crawling position, and the combination of these things made it extremely difficult for me to get a birthday picture I was happy with this month. I would sit you up, with no toys nearby to detract from the photograph, and you would immediately drop to your belly and crawl away to a more interesting place. In order to distract you from crawling away, I would clap, and you would get excited enough about clapping to not crawl away, but then I couldn't get you to stop clapping and just smile for the camera. Oh well, I can't complain too much, when my photography problems are of such an adorable nature.







You learned to sign this month, which is not only fun, but also opens up a whole new world of communication for us. You first did the sign for "milk" on May 16, and you have since also signed "all done" and "more". You bang on the table when you're thirsty, but I'm not willing to call that a "sign" even though I know what you mean, because I would much rather you find a way to communicate that particular need more gently. As soon as you started signing, I realized that I didn't know enough signs myself, and I felt bad for not introducing you to more signs before. We're trying to do more signs for you now, but you seem to have become impatient with us, and have started to make up your own signs. Once you figured out that you could talk with your hands, you started to "babble" with your fingers, wiggling them deliberately as if to say, "Is this a word? How about this?" One day, when you wanted me to turn on your mobile, you pointed at it, then made a little circle with your fingers, which I thought was pretty clever, especially since I had never signed "mobile" or "turn it on" to you before.



You're also becoming increasingly verbal. You've been saying "dadadada" for a while, but you never seemed to directly associate the sounds with any particular person, it was just your newest sound to make for a while. But gradually, you started to use a string of da's to refer to your parents, and then, once you added "ma" to your vocabulary, you started to distinguish between the two, and use a string of da's for daddy, and a string of ma's for mommy. It's not exactly words yet, but person-specific sounds are pretty word-like in my books. Within the last week or so, you have also added "na" to your vocabulary, and just today, you distinctly said "Nana" when your Nana walked into the room. But that's technically a spoiler for next month's birthday letter, because you turned ten months old yesterday. Oops.



This month was very full on the external events front as well. We had our first Mother's Day together, and your gift to me was that you let me take a very, very long nap. And honestly, I don't think I could have appreciated any other gift as much as that. We took our first trip to the shore together, but it was too windy to do much on the actual beach, other than run our fingers through the sand for a few minutes before heading back indoors. We'll take more trips to the shore, though, I promise. Jeremy's cousin got married this month, and you loved dancing with me in the sling at the reception, and you didn't complain too much when we didn't get home until after midnight. We have a pool membership for the summer at the pool where Nana and PopPop and the great-cousins all go, and we took our first trip to the pool this month, as well. It was incredibly warm on Memorial Day weekend, and once I figured out that I had to let you get wet really, really gradually, you ended up absolutely loving the pool, and staying in the water with me for over an hour.



We went on our first family camping trip, to a forest in Virginia where we stayed in a cabin and Mommy and Daddy played role-playing games all weekend. You had a great time at Camp Nerdly. You were surprisingly content to hang out and play with your toys while I played games with my friends, and you managed to win over many gamers who had been wary of the prospect of having a baby on the camping trip. And just this past week, we had two sets of houseguests, and you absolutely loved all the attention. You especially loved having a temporary big sister and little brother. You and Leo, who is seven months old, would sit on the floor together, and hold hands, or trade toys, or roll over on top of each other, and just generally show friendship in a way that only babies can. It was a great visit, and I was sad to see our friends leave. At least you'll get to see my Uncle Keith and Aunt Sharon again in a few weeks when then stop back in on their way home.



Honestly, though, I think the thing that changed the most this month was me. I finally went shopping and bought clothes that fit me, the way my body is right now, rather than how it used to be, or how it might hopefully be again someday. I love being your mommy, but I haven't loved every change that has happened to me over the past 18 months or so, and it was a big step for me to finally say, okay, this is who I am right now, and I am going to be content in this skin. One day this month, I was sorting laundry, and as I was making piles to put away, I noticed that I was thinking, "Okay, this is Valerie's pile, and this is Mummy's pile, and this is Daddy's pile." And it dawned on me that I was thinking of myself, in my own head, in the third person, as "Mummy". (Or Mommy, or Mama. On this occasion, however, my Canadian childhood was definitely poking through with "Mummy." It sounds better when I say it than when I type it, though.) They say that you are truly bilingual when you start to count in your head in your second language, and I think the same logic applies here. My life changed completely the day I had you, but now my identity has followed suit as well. I haven't stopped being Jule Ann, but I am now wholeheartedly "Mummy".

Love,
Mummy

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