Today our wee pop is ten months old. I am still thinking about the passing of the nine-months mark, and suddenly another month has passed. Those first few weeks seem to last for ever in a fog of sleep deprivation and lack of any real structure to the day. But now, although the days are still randomly ordered in response to Kazuo’s sleeping habits, they are much more predictable and my sensation of time has begun to speed up again.
Not long now and we will be in England with friends and family celebrating Christmas, New Year and meeting some of Kazuo’s other wee 2009-born buddies. And there will be much anticipation of celebrating the major milestone of getting to the end of his first year.
With mobility and fine motor skills being the top preoccupations right now, there is a lot of intense development going on. Kazuo is getting pretty cranky with the whole deal. I think the idea that we can just get up and walk away from him is intensely frustrating. We have spent another grumpy morning on the floor trying to work out this crawling thing… and he was awake/peeping almost every hour last night. It is wearying, but important work – and this too will pass! Sometime soon, probably before we get on that dreaded flight (ugh) in December, he will crack this whole getting around thing – and then the fun starts.
We spent the morning on Saturday at MOBOT – have I mentioned before that I LOVE these gardens? One of the things I appreciate about being in St Louis is the well-kept public facilities. Places like the History Museum, Art Museum, Zoo and Botanical Gardens are all free to enter and that is a splendid entitlement that should be the case everywhere. At MOBOT you have to visit on Wed or Sat morning to gain free access, but those times are suddenly quite doable since our baby-led lifestyle begins very early each day. Anyway, Kazuo and I went for a ‘walk’ with Bridgid and Luca while the Dadas did some hard graft at work in our absence.
As I mentioned, in his ten-month old state, Kazuo is just beginning to get a sense of the otherness of other children. There is something about these little people who move around near enough to him that he could almost touch them that is quite diverting. I think he still considers them fascinating toys, like Roby the Robot, or Crabby – crawling toys that move around for him to give chase. But he does make an effort to connect, even if it is just to pat/poke/prod his new friend. This picture pretty much sums up the relationship between Kazuo and Luca, a happy little co-existence that is enhanced by Luca’s sunny disposition:
The morning was pretty much spent ambling at two-year-old pace and sitting around in the gardens appreciating the warm of the sun and beauty of the environment. There was time to stop and ride a random concrete sheep… and I was grateful for the opportunity to get outdoors with our wee guy and enjoy good company and a fine day.
These ten months have concertinaed up lately, but I am also intensely grateful for the luxury of not working… for the joy of having been with Kazuo every day since he arrived and the comparative luxury (what a notion… something is wrong with the world right now…a luxury to look after your own child…) of being able to be his primary caregiver. As I have said before… hard work… sometimes work that feels a bit like it is killing off a few brain cells with monotony (but there are many other far less rewarding jobs that really DO do that…) but OH, such important work, and I would rather be the person doing that work right now, than paying someone else to do it for me.
50 things for 50 