Dear Great-Grandma,
Wow! I can’t believe it has been over a month since I wrote to you. I really need to be better about writing to you regularly or I forget so much stuff that I could be telling you. I am not even going to try to remember everything, because it would just be too much. But I will try and tell you some of the highlights.
I had a birthday! That was maybe the most amazing thing. I am a year old now. I had a birthday cake with a candle and I had presents and everybody came to visit me. It was so much fun. I didn’t really know what to do with the presents. It was fun to just play with the wrapping paper and the boxes, but everybody kept encouraging me to take the paper off and look inside. Grandma and Grandpa bought me a real car that really goes when I sit on it and move my feet. Sometimes it even goes when I just sit there. That is usually when Mommy and Daddy are right behind me. Do you think they have something to do with it? My other grandma and grandpa gave me a little Noah’s Ark with animals. I like the fuzzy manes on the lions. Mommy and Daddy gave me a big black thing with buttons. You can put this shiny disk inside it and the disk spins. Sometimes when I press the buttons this thing plays music, but I can’t always get it to do that. Anyway, I like pressing the buttons.
So I think I am going to like birthdays. The cake was really yummy. I would have eaten more of it if they had let me. Next year I will ask for another piece. I do get another birthday next year, right? That is how this works? You explained it pretty well so I think I remember that. By the way, I liked the birthday card you sent me. Thank you!
Let’s see. We had Christmas and I got presents for that, too. A lot of books and some other stuff. A ball! A really big blue ball! It is almost as tall as I am. I think that is one of my favorit presents. When I first saw it I was so excited I started shaking! I had never seen such a big ball before.
I saw you on Christmas, do you remember? It was so nice to see you and everybody else, too. My aunts and my grandma and grandpa from Mississippi came to visit me later. They spent a whole week at my house, just playing with me. I like it when I get to see them but it isn’t very often.
Then we had some snow, and I got to play in it. It is cold, and it makes it hard to walk! But it is very pretty. Mommy says when I am a little older we will do fun things in the snow. Right now I am a little too small.
I heard you went to the hospital last week. Grandma called us and told us. Guess what–I was sick at the same time! I almost had to go to the hospital, too! Then we would have been in the hospital at the same time. Mommy is glad I didn’t need to go to the hospital, but I don’t know. Is it fun to be in the hospital? It seems like it would be kind of interesting, but maybe it’s not. You should tell me about it the next time you write.
Anyway, I didn’t like being sick. I was very hot and my throat hurt and my head hurt and I was coughing and my nose was running and my tummy hurt. Mommy and Daddy were kind of worried about how hot I was so they kept giving me medicines and then they took me to the doctor. He looked at my ears and my throat and felt my neck and belly and said I was sick. Then Mommy and Daddy took me home and gave me pink yucky medicine. Now every day I have to take that yucky medicine, three times a day. I don’t like it at all, but I feel a lot better.
I am also getting lots more teeth. Right now I have eight teeth, four on top and four on the bottom. But you can also see four more teeth, which Mommy calls molars. They are all sticking out. Plus there are a couple more that aren’t sticking out that Mommy can tell will be here soon. Those are the canines, she says. So all in all I am looking to double my tooth count. Soon I will have sixteen teeth! I think that should be enough, don’t you?
Lately I have been trying a new technique to get Mommy and Daddy to do what I want. It’s pretty simple–I just arch my back and throw myself on the floor and cry and cry. Or sometimes I kneel down and touch my forehead to the floor and cry. Either way works pretty well–at least, I guess a lot of the time it doesn’t actually work, but I think it’s getting there. Anyway I think it’s a great idea so I do it a lot. The only drawback is that sometimes I actually hit my head and that hurts. Then I cry some more and Mommy and Daddy get exasperated.
Something else I have been doing is climbing. I climb up on the low windowsills and look out the window. I also have a cubbyhole in the kitchen that I climb up into and pretend I am a statue, or sometimes I just hide there and play peekaboo with Mommy and Daddy. I can also climb onto some of the sofas and chairs. There is a rocking chair in Mommy and Daddy’s room that I climb up into and then I can sit and rock. I have two little rocking chairs downstairs that are more my size, and they are much easier to climb onto but not as much fun to rock. I also like to climb the stairs, but the tricky part there is coming back down. I am starting to learn to come down backwards but it is easy to forget how I am supposed to do it.
I can play Pat-a-Cake and So Big! I can understand a lot of words and I can say “Ba.” But I mean a lot of different things when I say that. Sometimes I mean ball and sometimes I mean bottle and a lot of times I mean something else entirely. It is just a very useful word, you know? I say “ba” and Mommy does something. It works, and I only have to remember one word. I might not bother to learn anything else.
Is there anything else you want to know about me? If so I guess you will have to ask. I can’t think of anything else to say right now so I will sign this letter and go to bed! I love you and I hope you are feeling better after your stay in the hospital! Mommy sends her love, too.
Love,
Isaac