Monthly Maly Letter: Month ten

Dear Maly,

You turned ten-months-old today. You’re now into the double digits. Just from looking at pictures of you, it’s amazing to see how much you’ve changed and grown in just a month. You’re such a pretty girl and every moment I spend with you makes me just that much prouder of you. It’s undeniable that you’re my child due to your outward appearance, but sometimes I think you’re just too cute to be from my gene pool. Your hair is getting so long and it’s a gorgeous straw-colored blonde. We thought your eyes would have decided by now if they were going to change to either brown or blue. It’s looking like they’re going to stay brue. Or blown. Or stone. You have a very beautiful eye color. Very unique - just like you.

You reached many milestones this month. You cut your first two teeth in late January. They’re your bottom front teeth and as each day passes they grow bigger and bigger. Gone are the days of your empty toothless smile. You have choppers now. I’m anticipating the day when your mom tells me that you bit her while nursing.

Since you have teeth now, we’ve let you start eating solid foods that you can pick up with your hands and put into your mouth yourself. We started you with these little star shaped Gerber “Puffs”. It wasn’t but a few days after that when we started letting you try all kinds of new finger foods. You now eat green beans, ground turkey, potatoes, asparagus, mozzarella, grapes, mango. It’s so much fun to watch you eat on your own. You do an awesome job of feeding yourself and there isn’t a food yet that we’ve found that you don’t like.

Except little pieces of broken screwdriver handles.

Your Grandma was here for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and while you were crawling around on the kitchen floor, you found a little tiny piece of a screwdriver handle. You don’t ordinarily put random objects into your mouth so I watched you as you crawled around on the floor, toting your little piece of broken plastic, sitting yourself up occasionally to say, “oooh oooh ooooh oooh” as you held your treasure in your hand in front of you. I turned my attention to something else in the kitchen and turned and looked down as you started to crawl away and made a wretched gagging sound and a pool of drool spilled onto the tile in front of you. I watched you for a second to make sure that you were okay. You sat there on all fours silent and not moving. With Super Sonic Daddy Hearing I then heard you silently gasp for air as the piece of plastic had lodged in your throat. I ran over to you, scooped you up, held you face down, horizontal to the ground and slapped you hard enough on the back that, if you weren’t choking, would have warranted a visit from Child Protective Services.

The piece of plastic came out. You were scared from the whole ordeal. I was scared, too. After I held you, kissed you, told you it was going to be okay, you stopped crying. I put you in your high chair as your mom started getting your lunch ready. I stood there next to you and ran my fingers through your hair. Your Grandma asked me, “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” to which I lied and said, “Nah…” Your Grandma looked at me and said, “You’re a good dad.”

I can’t put into words how much you mean to me. I try very hard to be a good Dad for you. The love I have for you is something that only a parent knows; only my love is a gazillion times more.

Yesterday was your first Valentine’s Day. I bought you a fancy pink dress with flowers sewn into it. Your mom was shocked that I bought something so “girly”. I also got you a Valentine’s Day card. Your mom went to Double Daves last night to pick up our dinner and while she was out I wrote a message to you in your card. You sat in your high chair and ate asparagus and ground turkey as I wrote to you. I don’t know why, but I got teary eyed at that moment. I guess I was reveling in how happy I am to be your dad. I hope that one day when you’re much older, over the phase where you hate me (sometimes referred to as the “teens”), and possibly even married and have a daughter of your own that you’ll read that card and know that I tried my best to be the best dad that I could.

I love you, Sugar.

Love,

Daddy