Will at 13 months

It's strange, how big he feels in my arms sometimes. Who is this child? This large child? This boy? Wasn't he just a fragile itty bitty thing only yesterday?

I cherish those moments, short and few, when he lets his body relax, leans his head against my shoulder, and he feels, again, like a baby.

And yet he still looks like a baby. He's tall, but chubby and his rounded proportions - his round cheeks and eyes and little belly - plus his very thin soft sandy blond hair - make him look even more so like a baby.

But he's feeling less like a baby these days. He still clings to me and his daddy, and often wants to be held. But often he tumbles and twists out of arms, eager to explore, intent like a little scientist. He still tends to be disinterested in toys, but likes to get into the real things that mama and daddy have - our bags and drawers and drinks and books and gadgets. When I bring out a pile of laundry and set it on the floor, he likes to roll around in it and drag the clothes around the house and destroy whatever piles I've folded. He loves me to sit down on the floor and be at his level.

His circles are widening. I have to stop him from going into the street now. And he wants to walk down our sidewalk, several houses past our own.

His walk is turning into a quick little trot, that will soon be a run. He runs most in the evening, when he gets excited, after dinner and before bed. We call it his manic phase. The long days of spring and summer will be difficult. Already his bedtime has shifted from 7:00 to 7:45 or 8:00. We go through times where he is sleeping through the night, where I imagine we have finally reached it, it... the end of night wakings and night feedings... And then... he will get sick or start teething or we go on a trip and the night wakings start again. Not too bad, usually just a short one, once in the night, but I am ready for that to be over. Still, it's in those night wakings, as I'm laying him back in his crib, that he leans his head on my shoulder, so still, so peaceful, and I almost don't want the moment to end.

Because he is rarely peaceful. :-) Happy, but rarely peaceful. Always in motion. Tonight I opened a kitchen drawer and found that he had stashed inside of it an old cell phone, a toy, and an apple with little teeth marks in it. He is reaching more and more things these days. There are only a few surfaces where I can hide things away from him. We are entering a new era and I'm not always sure how to navigate it.

Into new territory, we venture!