Happy nine-month birthday

Today my child is nine months old. He has spent approximately as much time living as he has gestating. Unfortunately he has what I can only assume is hay fever on this momentous day, and he can't fully enjoy it. He says, "duddle, duddle, duddle."

Even so, nine months is a pretty darned good age for a baby. He's big enough that I'm not worried that he'll freeze or starve or sneeze his eyeballs out or anything, but he's still small enough to schlepp around when I'm in a hurry. His attention span is so short that he can lose interest in, say, an electric socket and start paying attention to a shaking rattle if he needs to. He's always up for a snuggle, but he doesn't constantly need to be snuggled. He's past the wrinkled newborn stage but not in the perpetually covered with jam stage. It's nice.

And he's just woken up from a five-minute nap. A mother's work is never done...