Happy 9 month birthday, Henri!

This past week Henri’s 9 month birthday passed with me thinking “Whoa! What happened to my baby?” He is growing up so quickly. He’s curious about everything. You can’t walk by anything without his hand whipping out and grabbing it. He is starting to protest when he can’t reach something or when something is taken away… I can tell he understands “no” and occasionally he listens. While I haven’t had him measured/weighed lately, he is a big boy - he has grown out of nearly all his 6-12 month clothes and is already wearing 12+ month sizes – he is about the same size as most the one year olds we know. He is also cuddlier now, I feel like I’m getting real hugs from him and he loves to grab the sides of my face and go in for an open mouth slobber kiss.

He’s very social. He crawls after the older kids at the park – some try to get away from him other’s try to engage.

At the park a couple weeks ago Henri had pulled up on a small pedestal as I was talking to the Australian mom of a 2 ^1/2 year old. Her son wandered over to Henri and took a seat on a nearby pedestal and says “hello” to Henri and introduces himself. Henri looks at him, smacks the pedestal with his open hand a couples times and wobbles around in response. Then the boy, clearly realizing Henri had missed his social cue asks encouragingly “What’s your name?” Henri continues staring at him. The little boy repeats himself. I tune out of this one-way conversation to continue talking to his mom and then when I tune back in the little boy is asking Henri “Are you shy?”

 

It’s hard to believe we are about to celebrate Henri’s first Christmas. I find myself being very grateful for all of my many blessings. We have received Christmas care packages from our parents containing gifts (mostly for Henri), hard to find products like cans of peas and Tylenol PM, as well as my beloved reindeer food (which I polished off in two days – Maxime is hoarding his jar of it just to taunt me).

I count myself so lucky to have such an incredible son, husband and family. I don’t know if it is the distance or the arrival of my son (or a combination of both) that makes me feel so blessed. I find myself thinking about what great parents I have and how much I love my husband and my son(who we waited so long for). So even though the holiday spirit isn’t all that strong here in Taiwan (not that they don’t have some décor and music going in the stores), it’s pretty strong in my heart. I can’t wait to see everyone back home in the spring of 2012. Merry Christmas!