Month Ten

Dear Ransom,
What a month you've had! You're now ten months old and you've seriously learned SO MUCH in the last month, it blows my mind!

The biggest thing you learned this month was how to crawl. Now, mind you, it all started with a weird wonky crawl where you tucked one leg under you for support, used one leg to push with and your arms to pull you along...and while it still very much looks like this-since I think you've just gotten use to it, you now spend most of your time on your traditional all fours. Now when I see you speedly getting all over the house its hard to imagine how immobile you use to be!

It probably helped that you had a whirlwind weekend trip to Ohio for you Daddy's cousin Jonathan's wedding where you spent time with your cousin, Cal, who is only a few weeks younger than you and who's been crawling for ages! I think he may have shamed you into trying harder at the crawling thing!

You are definitely delighted in your mobility and you have gotten into the habit of crawling up and down the hall laughing to yourself-hysterically. It seemed a bit odd at first, but I guess your new found freedoms really ARE that funny! You have definitely gotten into some funny circumstances-you've gotten into just about every cabinet on your level in the kitchen, gotten stuck under the dinning room table, and gotten caught several times doing a major no-no-pulling books off of bookshelves. We're still working on that one ;-)

Because you are now so mobile we've had to have some changes around the house, one of which was a  baby gate at the foot of our stairs. AND you now spend a few minutes ( not very long because you HATE it!) in the playpen that I set up in the dinning room corner. One good thing has come from your imprisonment in the playpen, though- a  week and a half ago you I finally heeded your whines and went to get you out of the playpen and you started clapping! We hadn't even been practicing that particular skill, but we went ahead and added it to our repartee. Now you will wave bye on demand or when anyone says the word "bye" in conversation...or just when you're leaving-basically its your favorite things to do. You also strum your bottom lip ( sometimes you even try to strum our bottom lips too) and love to make sounds with your mouth. In fact, if you are fussy or bored one of the fastest ways to make you happy again is to make a certain sound that you can easily mimic. Then we go back in forth, we make the sound, then you make the sound...and then every so often I'll throw in a different sound to throw you off and you'll belly laugh like its the funniest thing ever. Being your mom is a great ego boost. I've never had such a great audience.

This month you also learned the inevitable. That not only could you sit up, pull up and crawl throughout the day...but you could ALSO do those things in your crib. This was a grave disappointment for me. I was kind of hoping you'd never figure that out and would always think that you had to stay lying down in your crib. But, luckily you've been pretty good about playing for ten minutes or so and then letting me lay you down again and then you go straight to sleep. Whew!! I guess we've got more sleep training in our future though.
In not so pleasant firsts, this month you had your first trip to the ER. It seems that cutting your 7th and 8th teeth has been pretty hard on you, and not only have you been cutting them off and on since the end of April, this past week you started to run a very high fever. It kept going up and up and finally when it got close to 104 we decided to take you in just to make sure nothing else was wrong. It was scary for your Mommy and Daddy, but you handled it like a pro. You even flirted with all the nurses.

Yes, you continue to steal the hearts of all that you meet and we pray that you will always be able to have a good attitude in the face of trials. For there will be trials. I just hope that they are trials for the sake of The Kingdom of God.
We love you,
Your Mommy