Dear Zack and Jadyn,

It has been an eventful month, kids … so much so that I am again writing you a combined letter—a format I may just stick with from here on out. You were born on the 11th and 12th days of your respective birth months, and writing separate, lengthy, back-to-back missives is proving to be a challenge for me. So challenging, in fact, that, not only am I combining this month’s letters—I am also writing to you four days after Zack’s monthly milestone and three days after Jadyn’s. (I’d like to be more punctual, but raising you keeps getting in the way of writing about raising you. It’s really annoying. I think you should start fending for yourselves more.)

But about your busy month …

Zack, you decided a couple of weeks ago that you were done sleeping in your crib, and informed us that you would commence to sleeping on the little fold-out couch in your bedroom, effective immediately. A trip to Toys-R-Us followed shortly thereafter, and you have now officially graduated to a Big Boy Bed … and not just any Big Boy Bed:

Between the toys and the bed, your room now looks Geoffrey the Giraffe’s satellite office.

Because we are no longer able to put you in a cage for the night, we have been placing a gate in your doorway. This solution has worked famously, as evidenced by you sauntering into our room at around 5 a.m. the other day. You explained to us that you had climbed over the gate, and seemed to have done so with great ease.

I remedied the situation by again placing the gate in the doorway, with the added twist of installing it several inches above the floor. I was careful to leave it low enough so that it was physically impossible for you to fit under it.

I don’t know if you’ve seen “The Incredibles” too many times or if you’ve been pitching 20th Century Fox on helping them promote “X-Men 3,” but you apparently are a mutant who has the ability to flatten himself to a thickness of about two inches. The gate was again defeated, and you are now known as Flatman.

As if moving up to a Big Boy Bed wasn’t enough, you also graduated from your old 5-point-harness car seat to a Big Boy Seat:

All of this has me feeling like someone has pushed the fast-forward button on my life, and that you are growing up at high speed. Slow down, dude.

And speaking of growing up at high speed: the move to the Big Boy Seat was largely due to Ms. Jadyn’s continued and rapid growth.

Jadyn, despite being 10 months old, you can’t wear any clothing smaller than that designated for 18- to 24-month-olds. As such, strapping you into an infant car seat had become something akin to a good-ol’-fashioned hog-tying. So, after sandblasting from Zack’s old car seat the two-years-worth of every crushed and coagulated snack food imaginable, we bumped you up a notch.

Aside from continuing to swell (your thighs have thighs), you also spent the month learning and perfecting the art of crawling, as well as cruising around upright while holding on to various pieces of furniture. In some regards, this has made everyone happier, since you no longer erupt 1,000 times per day into a maniacally loud and sustained grunting sound that roughly translates to: “GAWWWWWD!!! I can not believe that I have to rely on you two buffoons to move me from here to there! Move me, dammit! Move me!”

The downside is that you are now able to move yourself from here to there—and by “there,” I mean anyplace where there are neatly stacked items for you to fling about the room, or a myriad of small, hard objects that could easily result in a choking death. This has increased exponentially our use of the phrase, “No, no, Jadyn” and its accompanying headshake, the latter of which seems to be the only part of our “No, No”-ing that interests you; before doing what we’ve asked you not to, you shake your head, and it is hysterically funny to see you doing so.

Your developmental burst over the past month has also included learning to spontaneously wave bye-bye, and your arsenal of nonsensical-yet-adorable babbling sounds has grown tremendously. You sometimes look us in the eye with great seriousness as you forcefully deliver a few of these sounds, often while slapping your hand on the surface in front of you, and it makes me wish I knew what the hell it is that you think you’re telling us, because it seems terribly important.

In late April, much of our extended family joined us at our church for your Dedication Ceremony, which is the Unitarian Universalist equivalent of a christening, except without all of the “you were born in sin” bullshit. You both were delightful during the ceremony, and it was a real joy to experience that with you.

There’s more. It’s impossible to fit a month into one letter, especially when you’re growing up so damn fast. (Fortunately, I’ve already documented in a previous post one of the month’s most compelling dramas, which was sort of a lame version of that old “Rescue 911” show.)

So, kids, aside from your continued insistence on waking at around 5 a.m. every day and your frequent crying fits—two characteristics I like to call “The Bane of My Existence”—I couldn’t feel any luckier than I do to have such beautiful children. I am incredibly thankful that I work from home, and can be around to experience so much more of your childhood than I otherwise would.

I love you both very much.

Love, Daddy

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Filed under: Jadyn, Parenthood, Zack
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