Dear Isaiah,

You wave.  You are now waving hello and good-bye to anyone and everyone.  This thrilling little move popped out of nowhere.  Two weeks ago you were opening and closing your hand, but your fist was opening and closing in your own direction, like you were waving goodbye to yourself.

Then, one day last week, I walked into your room to greet you Good Morning and squeal over another day with you, and you nonchalantly  lifted up one plumpy arm and gave it a slow and measured up’n down motion in the air.  I laughed out loud.

And now you wave to everyone.  I’m quite sure you still have no idea what it means, and you probably expect strangers to laugh and get all giddy like your Dad and I do, but they just smile and goo-goo over you instead.  It’s pretty amazing, hilarious, and wild to watch you begin to communicate with the world around you.

Ten months, my sweet pea, and they couldn’t have gone any faster.  Just like that, in a few blinks of the proverbial eye, ten months have passed and November is stalking our front steps.  I went through your pictures the other day and already felt that sense of panic – trying to hold onto something that cannot be held – when I realized how quickly you are growing and how unstoppable that growth is and how it will continue.

You crawl faster and more confidently each day.  You are fascinated by the strings and laces of things – shoes, hoodies, pants, even the straps of your car seat and changing pad – and have a smile to light up New York City on a dreary day.  You love when your father puts you on his shoulders and you ride him like a bumpy horse.  When I snuggle with you, you squirm around to give me baby zerberts on my skin and even pinch my neck until I tell you to stop while you just laugh in my face.  Even your strength is out of this world.  When you grab your spoon while you are eating, I seriously have to muster more fight in me to get it from you.

To call you the light of my life, the love of my life, the best thing in my life would be failing to adequately capture how completely transformative your presence has been.  My life, from the moment I knew I was pregnant with you, to this very moment – writing this in the hour before I know you will wake to a new day – has been lit up from within.  The light in you illuminates the lives in this house and we, your dad and I, can only marvel at how you manage to hold so much love in your little body.

The ten months of your life have been the most graced of ours.

Love,

Mom