Leo, Joshi and Erasmus

This 9th month

Dear Joshi!

Your papa and I are continually awed by your lightening speed development. You learn so many new things each day and seem to understand more and more. It is like you are a sponge just soaking it all up. You understand so many words now. Like cereal, guitar, necklace, lion, little lamb, dream catcher, bath, book, hungry, mama's milk, no no, brother, papa, mama, kitty cat, bunny rabbit. These are the words you noticably recognize. In other words, if I ask you where is mama's guitar you turn and look to where it hangs on the wall.

You had taken a while to head shaking, possibly because of the visual stimuli, the rhythm of it. You shake it while singing and find it very funny when we copy cat you. You also love to at play banging on the table, this is most fun when mama or papa also pounds on the table in imitation. You love that game. We took you to the Deutsches Museum, to the kid's play area, where they have a bunch of instruments. You found it great to bang on the hand drums and the piano : )

When mama plays her guitar now, you insist on playing to...there is nothing that quite excites you like the sight of mama's guitar, swimming and bath time come pretty close, but the guitar definitely wins.

You are crawling, pulling up, cruising furniture. And despite being sick so often (for most of the new year so far!) whether it be with a cold or virus, or getting your teeth, you are in such good spirits most of the time. You now have since the beginning of January gotten 3 of the 4 upper front teeth. This hasn't been much fun for you and has made sleeping really difficult.
Putting you to sleep for naps or for the night has been difficult since the beginning. Sometimes you really fight sleep, sometimes you have trouble falling asleep. It always involves much coaxing, love and support from mama and some tears (sometimes lots of tears) on your part. Even though we have you in your own crib in the evening (until we go to bed) you do go to sleep alone even if you still sleep best next to mama. Usually around midnight, if you are still in your room, you insist on going to mama and papa's bed. You are still nursing quite a bit and show no signs of wanting to stop or give that up! You eat pretty well, but mama's milk is still simply the best. Your favorite foods right now are avocados and anything with potatoes.
You also now dance and kick when we listen to music, especially to your favorite songs. It is so cute!
Love you bunches
Yo Mama

9 mos - Crawling to and pulling up on mommy

Happy New Year and Nine Months Old!

Dear Joshi,

You turned 9 months old on New Year's Eve and saw your first fireworks. You woke up because they were so loud...and we watched them from the kitchen window together. You thought they were cool, but were also quite sleepy and kept burying your head in my shoulder between curious glances. I was happy that you weren't afraid cause they were quite loud and plentiful!

Now we are a couple of weeks into the New Year and you have made a major leap in development on all levels. It is a whole new ball game now. You are crawling all over the place. It took you a while to actually realize what it means to be mobile, i.e. that you could determine where and when to go, that you could follow Mommy or leave Mommy. It was so cute to watch you make these discoveries.

You are able wave at people, although this surprised me, cause all of a sudden you could just do it, without any conscious effort on any of our parts to teach you to do it. You took me by surprise just a day or two ago, when I took you for a walk and we stopped in Wöllingers for a drink and to get warm by the fireplace, and you waved to (and flirted with) the older couple at the table next to us. I was asking myself, when did you learn to do that? I thought maybe it was a coincidence, but since then you have been waving hi and bye to people quite regularly. Stopping in front of the hallway mirror the other day, you waved to both of us : )

Mama is so much looking forward to this new year with you. All the things you will yet discover, all the things you will learn in 2011!

Lots of love, your Mama

Baby's 1st Christmas

Dear Joshi,
We had a wonderful Christmas season. Although times were stressful with Papa having a new job working long hours, we managed to squeeze in some wonderful Christmas activities, including taking an old-fashioned steam train ride around Munich, going to a Christmas tree farm near the Alps and cutting down our own small Christmas tree, a Christmas party in Austria hosted by Christian's new employer, Bischof. Everyone swooned over you in your Santa hat. We also made an appearance at the JYM Christmas party and you were the heart throb of nearly every female JYMer there.

Your Oma came down for Zwickau for the Christmas and we spent it very low key in our cozy little apartment. We did German-American Christmas, in other words, we decorated the tree and did a gift exchange on the 24th and then hung up the stockings and left cookies for Santa, who brought more presents for everyone on the 25th. It was wonderful. Mama made Turkey Dinner with all the trimmings for Christmas day dinner and it was a wonderful white snowy Christmas. We took a walk on Christmas day through the snow-covered neighborhood and not a soul was out besides us. It was truly a winter wonderland.
And you enjoyed Christmas, except for being sick with a fever on the 23rd and crying inconsolably for hours, breaking mama's heart all the way....being afraid of Oma, who was a stranger to you again after so much time (3 months!), by the 24th you felt quite a bit better and on Christmas day, you were back to your old self and you and Oma the best of pals.
You were not so much into the packages and the unwrapping, but you loved all the new toys Santa brought you.
You are nearly 9 months old now. You are definitely saying Mama....since you were 7 1/2 months old you have been saying Mamamamama....but we weren't sure if you meant me specifically or if you were just mumbling words. You were at Lena and Bernhard's for the day once, while Mama and Papa had some downtime at the Sauna and you looked around for me at some point saying Mamamamama.....
Now it is clear though that you mean it.
I also swear you tried to say Kitty Cat to Erasmus.....sounds a bit like Keeee Kaaaa
but this could be a coincidence???

You are definitely understanding a lot and you are busy playing, playing, playing exploring your little world. You are able to crawl now, more or less....not your favorite activity though, and it is more just a necessary evil to get to one of your stations where you like to pull up to standing. Like the coffee table. You pull yourself up there and play with the coasters for long stretches. You love standing and seem to never tire of it. You can even stand for a few seconds on your own. It is soooo cute, to watch you finally becoming more mobile.
I love you my little Christmas elf!


Here as some nice fotos taken of us at the JYM Christmas party:

Joshi investigating his spoon

Joshi "shadowboxing" (at 8 months)