The Amazing Addison

Addison, you are no longer a baby. You’re a toddler! At ten months old you . . .

• wave bye-bye
• drink from a straw
• clap your hands
• play peek-a-boo
• pet Big Kitty gently now
• insist on feeding yourself
• open and close doors by yourself (you crawl everywhere!)
• love to look at books

Your Aunt Rachael calls your crib and playpen “baby prison”!
You look miserable!

Addison and Aunt Rachael

Crib time!

Play Pen Time!

Much to your mother’s dismay, today your first official word was “da-da”. You said it quite clearly. Yay!!!
Actually your first syllables were “ba-ba”. I like to think it meant “Hello Grandma!”, but I know I can’t get your parents to go for that one…hehe.
Word #1: Da-da
Eagerly awaiting Word #2!
**Your mother’s first word was “moon”. Or rather “moo”. One spring evening in California, I had her on my hip as we were going out to the car. There was a huge full moon. I said to your mother, “Look Nichole, there is the MOON!” And I pointed to it. Your mum pointed back and said “moo!”.

Your mum says you sound like a velociraptor. For sure you are unabashed about experimenting with your voice. You screech at the top of your lungs and encourage everyone in the house to mimic you. It’s very liberating!!
Here is a picture of you demonstrating your great screeching capacity. Along with your ravenous appetite. You were having a grand time of it!

Ravenous Addison Velociraptor!

Tug of War!!

Addison, today you and I went to the UU Church of Peoria. There are a lot of very kind and smart grown ups there. They welcome all kinds of people with all kinds of thinking, even Atheists like your Gramma-cat! (“The folks in our congregation hold a wide variety of religious beliefs: theist, atheist, humanist, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, pagan, and others.”) Which is very nice because if your mum agrees to let you visit the church often, you will learn a great deal about many different ways of thinking.

But today, none of that mattered to you. You were just in a room with a nice lady, another big kid, and some cool toys.

When gramma-cat came to pick you up, you were sitting on the floor, and looked up at me with a bright sun-shiney smile.

…every day.

Not your mum. She reads the book “What to Expect in the First Year”.

Every day.

She reads it before she goes to sleep, and sometimes when Grammacat comes home, she insists that your Grammacat listens to passages from the book. Her friends don’t think much of the book. But your mother is very smart and wants to learn as much as there is to know about babies. In a few weeks, your mum will take her first college class: Child Development 101.

This book is tattered and dog eared. Your mother reads it every day.