Izzie, you're 10 months old today!

Dearest Izzie,

Congratulations, you turned 10 months old today! Just this week, the weather took a turn for the cold, and we started to bundle you up in your winter clothes. It seems appropriate now that you’re only two months old away from your first birthday. You were born at the beginning of winter, so as the weather gets colder, it reminds us of that special time when you came into our lives. It’s been a great ride, and you’ve made our lives as easy as anyone could possibly expect. Just today, you sat around patiently in your stroller and played with your giraffe toy while Mommy and Daddy had lunch after church. We think you’re an All-Star.

Well, on to the accomplishments! You did two major things for the first time last month. First, you started crawling. At first, it was pretty slow, and you really had to put forth a lot of effort just to move even half a foot or so. But you slowly got better everyday, and now you can crawl pretty well, even when you’re on a slippery surface like our hardwood floors. Like Mommy said, it can be quite a task to follow you around these days. Pretty soon, you’ll have seen every nook and cranny in our new home! We’re happy you have your new found freedom, but now we’re going to have to work that much harder to keep you safe.

The other major thing you did this month was imitate our sounds. You had being saying “Umma” (Korean for “Mommy”) for a long time, and even said “ba” and “da” before this last month. But before you were mostly just trying out new sounds. Now you can say those phrases, and some other ones, on cue. You also said “bye” and learned how to wave your arm when one of us leave. It looks kind of funny, because you just wave your entire arm like a windmill. On a much smaller scale, you also began to shake and wiggle your fingers, which looks kind of funny too.

You also began to change the way you sleep this month. Until recently, you were always a back sleeper. But now, out of nowhere and at all times of the night, you’ll decide to just roll over to your tummy or sleep on your side. At first, this really worried us, because you had never done this before, but we couldn’t really stop you, and you’ve been doing it for a few weeks now. Both of your parents are tummy sleepers, so if you take after us, this could just be a natural and inevitable development.

This month, I thought it’d also be interesting to recap some current events. The country is going through its most serious economic crisis in quite some time. In a couple weeks, we will have a presidential election, and we may very well make history with the first non-white male president in the history of our country. It’ll be really interesting to see how it all turns out.

We love you, sweetheart.

M+D