Dear Brooks,
Well, your fourteenth month flew by and now it’s mid-April and I’m just now finding time to write your letter. Our pace of life is so insane and it is so unfathomable to me that from here on out, it’s only going to get faster. Until you leave for college and then I am going to be BORED OUT OF MY MIND.

I had to travel for work this month. I was gone for a whole week and while I thought it was going to be completely awful and I cried when I was dropping you off at school, it was actually a really productive week and I felt more like my old self that week than I had in an entire year. But I don’t ever want to leave you for that long again, most especially if your father isn’t there with me for some reason. When I returned home, I was so excited to see you, but instead of tackling me and eating my chin, you were sort of bashful. You’d smile and hide, as if you were playing it cool. But then we went downstairs to play and you just wanted to hold my hand and walk me all around the house.
Since that trip, you’ve been very attached to your dad. You cry when he leaves the room sometimes and one night in a most adorable display of affection, you wanted all three of us to be together, no exceptions. I was trying to put you to bed while your dad was putting some things away in your room and when he left, you completely melted down. Thinking you wanted your father to put you to bed, I called him and said “he wants you”. This had never happened before ever, and while sad, I also thought it was cute. Dad came back and as I was leaving the room, you melted down again. We tested this several times, and apparently you just wanted all three of us together, all night long, like we had all been apart for far too much time. So, for about an hour, we all sat on the floor of your room and played. You’d bring us book after book – first Dad would read, then me. We played with your blocks and all three snuggled on the floor. All until you were ready to go to bed. But I think it is so ridiculously sweet that you wanted the three of us to be together and that you made sure that happened.

On another night when your dad was out of town, I had an unusually difficult time getting you to go to sleep. You were so unbelievably tired, but you could not go to sleep, and you completely freaked out every time I left the room. I eventually laid on the floor by your crib and stuck my finger through the slat so you could hold it. I sang to you from the floor. Every so often, you’d get up and look at me through the crib slat and giggle. I couldn’t decide if you were saying “yay! Mama’s still here!” or “HA! I AM VICTORIOUS!” I laid there for about an hour and when you still weren’t going down, I decided to step outside of the room. And you cried so hard. But I just laid on the floor outside of your room, closed my eyes, and looked at the clock periodically. I decided I was going to give it three minutes because a piece of my soul died every time you wailed. You were asleep in less than two. Still, it was awful, I felt horrible all evening, and I swear you were sort of mad at me when I went to get you in the morning. I can’t tell you how much I hated doing that and I don’t ever want to do that again. I want you to trust me and I hate leaving you crying like that, but you were so so tired, and I knew you just needed to sleep. But I’m sorry you went to sleep covered in tears. It’s just awful for me to think about. Thankfully you are usually a very good sleeper. We are so lucky in that way.

You’ve learned some new tricks in the last 6 weeks. When we say “Brooks, where’s your hair?” you sit up tall, so proudly, and with a huge smile pat your hand on top of your head. And you’re so used to this drill now that sometimes when we just say “Brooks”, you grin and put your hand on top of your head like “I know what you’re going to ask me! Wait! I got it!” And you are just so adorably pleased with yourself that it’s almost impossible not to swallow you whole.

We’ll also say “Brooks, where’s your nose?” and I think you know what we’re asking, but you don’t quite have the dexterity to get your little pointer finger to touch your little nose. Most of the time you end up pointing somewhere between your cheek and your temple. We’re still working on that bit. My only hope is that you don’t poke yourself in the eye.
You are absolutely speaking in full sentences, we just aren’t sure what language it is. You will go on and on about something, using loads of inflection, many syllables and sounds, arms waving just to help you get your point across, but we have no idea what you’re saying. Your sounds are so precious, most especially when we hear you talking to yourself from the backseat of the car, but I cannot wait until I understand what you are saying. I would love to know what’s going on in that little brain of yours.
You’ve also added “mama”, “dada”, and “no” to your verbal repertoire, but I think you still prefer pointing, hand gestures, and using your special language instead of English.
You also initiate games of peek-a-boo now. You have now become the hider. You’ll pick up a blanket, cover your face, and then magically make yourself appear with the biggest smile like you are the craftiest kid on the planet.
My favorite new development of yours is that you’ve become quite snuggly over the last few weeks. You are very tactile and if we give you something soft, you love to lie down like a cat and rub your face all over it. Pappy got you a soft “sheepie” blanket and you love to nuzzle all over it. Also, if we’re standing up and doing anything, you’ll walk over to us, cling on to our legs, and bury your face there.

You’re also starting to snuggle stuffed animals. I recently pulled out “Octo”. Octo is a big stuffed yellow Octopus who was one of your first friends. When you were an infant, sometimes the only way I could get you to take a nap was to put Octo across the room staring at you. I think with Octo there you didn’t feel so alone and you could go to sleep peacefully. The other day, I pulled Octo out and said “do you remember Octo?” and I gave Octo a big squeeze around the neck and said “you loved Octo!” and you promptly got up and walked into the kitchen. Thinking you were bored with this ordeal, I was so surprised to see you quickly returning from the kitchen with your stuffed Clifford dog from Amma. You walked up to me, squeezing Clifford around the neck the entire time, just as I had done with Octo, and when you got to me, you threw Clifford on the ground and smiled like “see! I have one, too, Mama!” It was so cute to me that you recognized the similarity between those two animals, especially since they are so different.
I love that every month you find a new way of showing affection. For quite awhile now, you’d rest your forehead against ours and this always seemed like your sweet little way of saying “I love you”.


But just this past week, for some reason as our foreheads were resting peacefully against each other, you decided to pull back and slam your forehead into mine like a ram on a tree. I honestly thought you broke my nose. Because you are insane, you laughed. I then put you down, and you walked over to a mirror and started headbutting your mirror image and by the time I made it to you to stop the madness, you already had a red mark and a knot on your skull. And you were laughing maniacally. I had started to have high hopes of you being a genius since Verbal Bootcamp was working so successfully, but with one slam of the forehead, all hopes were squashed. What is the deal with that? You fall down enough on accident! We don’t need to damage your little brain intentionally!
This month also marks your third plane trip. We gave you a B+ on the way out there, but you got an A+ on the return. You could not have been better. We decided that you had so much fun in San Diego that you wanted to behave well so that we’d be inclined to take you on more trips in the future. We rented a house with 4 other families, and there were 6 other kids ranging from 12 years old to you. I think you were quite overwhelmed the first few days, but towards the end, I think you had decided that we were with our new family and I think you were quite happy about it.
I cannot stress enough how different travel is now that we have you. The amount of preparation involved in going on a trip with you is asinine and before we had even left, I remember thinking “wow, I’m going to need a vacation from this vacation”. But you had such a great time and we had such a great week with good friends that all of that preparation became completely worth it.
Plus! You met the Pacific! And you are IN LOVE WITH IT.
Because we are first time parents, we did not come to the beach completely prepared. I had purchased a nifty, over-protective UPF sun suit for you, and even sun socks! We brought them all to San Diego with us, but the day we went to the beach, it was so cold, I thought that you certainly wouldn’t be in the water, so we wouldn’t need them.

But you took one look at that water and you just wanted to GET IN IT. We put you down and let you touch your toes and I thought “certainly he’ll feel how cold it is and then he won’t want to have anything to do with it anymore”. Wrong. You ran straight towards it and then bent down and buried your face in it. Then, as a wave approached, I thought “certainly, this wave will scare him a bit and then he’ll want to get out of the water”. Wrong. The wave brushed over your little toes and you laughed like you had just met your new best friend and that wave was the best best friend any little boy could have. Daddy kept trying to hold your hand, but you’d just pull away and run off towards the water, laughing and giggling the entire time.




And while I’m sure people thought we were crazy – crazy for allowing our little baby to play in the freezing Pacific Ocean WEARING COTTON – I so love your enthusiasm for life and while I think we’re going to have trouble reigning you in from time to time, I think it’s so fantastic that you just run full force at things and tackle them head on.
I think I’ve only just now been able to sit back and process the changes we endured during your first year of life. It was a very tough year for me physically. My recovery from your birth was very difficult and I didn’t even realize how awful I was feeling for so long until I finally started feeling a bit better. (To any future daughters I may have, please get your thyroid checked after you have a baby. Apparently it runs in our family and mine went undiagnosed for far too long.)
I was also not prepared for the mack truck of emotions that slams you in the face after you have a child. I have never lived in a place of fear, and the amount of fear and worry that I was overcome with after your birth was more than I could have prepared for. I have finally accepted those emotions as a part of parenthood and I recognize that they most likely will never go away. Making sure we provide the best life possible for you is a daunting task. We’ve been blessed with such a marvelous, perfect gift in you, and I just don’t want to break you. (This becomes much more difficult when headbutting hard objects becomes your favorite pastime.) But when you’ve been blessed with such a perfect gift, and life still feels hard sometimes, you feel guilty for not feeling like life is fantastic every single second of every day. But good grief, when my days are filled with trying to cook healthy meals, finding some sort of concealer that is capable of covering up these dark-eye circles, maintaining a career, a marriage, friendships, decorating a house, DOCUMENTING YOUR LIFE, researching childhood medical practices, vaccines, nutritional supplements, developmental toys, TEACHING YOU WHERE YOUR NOSE IS, reading to you, playing with you, maintaining my weight, my health, keeping up with politics, current events, KEEPING MY CAR FILLED UP WITH GAS, getting my oil changed, and finding time to actually LOOK YOUR FATHER IN THE FACE on a daily basis, it all feels quite exhausting and while life is fantastic, I have to admit that I am not running around shouting “EVERYTHING IS AWESOME” every second of every day. We have a lot going on. We are still learning. And I trust that we will find better balance.
You are such a gloriously happy little being and we are so blessed that you are such a healthy, upbeat little guy.

While life has become monumentally more difficult, it has also become monumentally more wonderful. My heart explodes on a daily basis because I just can’t get enough of you. You have been so patient with us. I can’t thank you enough. And as I write these letters to you, sometimes I think I can’t wait until you’re older and we can sit down at the kitchen table and have long talks about life. I realize that since you’re a boy, you may not be interested in having long talks about life, but I’m going to keep my hopes up for now.
Love,
Mama
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