a letter to jude

Dear Jude,

Yesterday, kiddo, you turned eleven months old. This is ridiculous. As much as I try to keep you from growing up, you seem intent on doing so. Crazy kid.

You know, as each month goes by, Daddy and I keep saying, "This is our favorite stage. No wait, THIS is our favorite stage. No actually, THIS is our favorite stage." So I say with a grain of salt that this past month has been my favorite. MommyDaddy love seeing your personality - your sweet, independent, hard working, stubborn, cuddly, funny, entertaining personality, and we love watching you as you learn and grow. You're such a blessing to us, sweet Jude, and we're so glad you're a part of our life.

In the past month, you seem to have grown by leaps and bounds, but perhaps my favorite area of growth is your ability to play games by noticing repetition. You and I play a particularly fun game (to you, at least) that involves the lid to your bottle. Notice that it doesn't involve any of the myriad of toys we own - but a bottle lid. You take the lid of the bottle, and holding in laughs, hand it to me. I pretend to take a sip, and say, "Mmmm! That was delicious!" and hand it back to you. You giggle and try to put the bottle lid on the top of my head. I put it on my head, and laughing your little hiney off, you climb up to get it down. Then I put it on top of your head, and you giggle and shake your head to get it down. Then we start all over again. Judeabug, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing than playing that sweet game with you.

You're also starting to recognize people and get excited about seeing friends. You love laughing at silly faces people make at you, and you get a kick out of making people smile at you (especially when we're standing in line and you can make strangers smile). You love to be held, but you also get antsy when you can't get down and explore the world around you.

Speaking of which, you're walking around holding onto our fingers and starting to stand on your own for a few seconds at a time. I seriously can't believe that you're going to be one whole entire year old in four weeks. One year! In four weeks, you'll no longer be drinking formula or using bottles. In four weeks, we'll stop referring to your age in months. In four weeks, Daddy and I are going to celebrate one of the most important days of our lives. In four weeks, you'll be one year old.

So today, Judeabug, when you are eleven months old, I want to make sure you know that we love you very much. We love you more than you could possibly imagine. You are cherished, wanted, adored, and loved. I want you to know that when we tell you, "no," when we don't give you what you want because you're throwing a fit, and when we let you cry sometimes, that we do those things because we love you. We love you so much that we don't want you to get hurt and we want you to have boundaries.

When you get older there will be so many times that you'll be mad at us because we don't let you do or have something. There will be times that you'll think we're purposefully making your life miserable, or that you'll think we're unfair and mean. It's okay for you to be angry at us, but I just want you to know that the reason we don't let you have everything you want and the reason we let you experience the consequences to your actions is because we love you SO very much. You can't do anything to earn our love, Judeabug, and you can't do anything to lose it. We love you because. Because we do.

Love,

Daddy and Mommy