Fifteen Month Letter

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Dear Gabriel,

You turned 15 months old yesterday. You are well over a year old now.

Watching you develop is an amazing experience. Right now I am sitting at the kitchen table watching you drink some milk, eat some fruit and peanut butter crackers, and try to feed yourself macaroni and cheese. Those noodles are slippery.

You are the type of kid who knows what he wants and when he wants it. Sometimes you tell me you want food while you’re eating food. And I am to understand that you mean the options before you are no longer acceptable. So we try to find something else, which you also refuse, before you return to the first thing and eat it happily. I’m not always sure of the point of those little treasure hunts. Probably just telling me that you’re in charge.

You’re walking like a semi-pro now. You still stumble occasionally, but you are right back on your feet. Crawling is no longer your mode of choice. You’re gaining other motor skills, too. You’re great at taking things out of containers and putting them back in. You’re starting to stack things and then knock them over. And you love to ride your little car and push your little cart. You are basically all over the place these days. Nothing is safe.

You’re not talking yet. You use a few signs pretty routinely: You can ask to be picked up, you can tell me you’re hungry, you can tell me no/stop it/I don’t want that, you can signal that you’re done eating and want to get down, and you sometimes use the sign for more. You point at things and can generally get your message across through some combination of gestures and sounds, but it will be really nice as we add more words or signs to your vocabulary.

You still love music. You don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the television when it’s on unless you hear a song. I often turn on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while we get ready in the morning, and you light up when they start the hotdog dance. Sometimes when you get fussy in the car, I turn on a kids’ music CD. That usually calms you down quickly. I suppose your love of music was inevitable, but it still makes me and your daddy happy.

We found out a couple of weeks ago that you break out in hives when given amoxicillin. And we were giving you amoxicillin because when you get mosquito bites, they get big blisters on them. And then they pop. And some of them get infected. So now your legs are covered in scabs.

But even scabby legs don’t change how wonderful you are. You are the main thing that keeps me going, baby boy. Your beautiful smile and joyous laughter are the fuel I function on. So keep smiling and laughing, my love.

I love you,

mama