Dear Merritt,

Seventeen months have passed. This is not unlike turning 23. You can drink, you can vote, but you can't quite rent a car or collect Social Security. You're welcome to laugh and laugh when, years from now, you read this and ask what Social Security is and why it no longer exists. And then you can cry.

I'm not trying to make light of your seventeen-month-iversary. It's just there aren't size seventeen month clothes (you're still hanging out in the twelve month section, anyway). And there aren't any major seventeen month milestones that I can think of. Though, if you'd like to make one, say, achieving three stars on every level of Angry Birds, that would simultaneously make your mom very proud and fuel her fire to beat you to it. What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter if this month comes with significant clothes sizes or benchmarks, you make it significant.

Seriously. You done learnt some stuff in your seventeen months on this here planet. And you don't cease to entertain, amaze, and endear yourself to us in irreversible ways Every. Single. Day.

Music resides in your soul. I pull out my guitar and you strum, strum, STRUM! And when that intensity gets to be too much for you, you dance it out. Which is like hugging it out, but with less hugging and more twirling. Homegirl can twirl. But your musicality doesn't end there. Your most recent fascination is with your harmonica. You bring it to one of us and we play you a few notes. What happens when we hand it back to you is a direct result of a genetic predisposition: you press the harmonica to your precious lips and then hum the same sounds we just played for you. It's 1. Fricking Adorable. And 2. The exact same thing I've always done when I can't play a solo. Guitar, piano, harmonica, accordion: matters not. I just fake it with my voice pipes. Turns out, you do, too.

You are currently suffering from Pink Eye and an ear infection, but that didn't stop you from owning me at Connect Four this afternoon. Your version of it.

Know what's charming? The way you back that thing up and plop down in our laps. Sometimes it's to read a story. Sometimes it's because you need to rest because wandering around carrying a colander and a comb is exhausting, dude. Sometimes it's because you just want to sit. On one of us. With your head against a heart.

Also buy-you-a-pony-worthy: the fact that you now speak a language we sort of understand. Every sound you hear, or lack of sound, every time someone enters a room, or doesn't, the mere existence of the universe ... all of this causes you to shout "WHAT?" with the fiercest conviction. We respond, mostly in English. And then you wax poetic/sentimental/enthusiastic, and all in gibberish. Merritt, we hang on your every gibber.

You are still signing. American Merritt Sign Language. You point a lone E.T. finger to your mouth to indicate "eat/hungry" while saying "muh" (more). You sign more with two phone-home fingers touching. We see these signs probably eleventy brazillion times a day. You're not actually hungry; you don't want more. You just like communicating. Even if it makes you a liar.

When you are actually eating, you now prefer a dish and a utensil. All refined-like.

Unless Yan Yan is involved. Then all bets are off.

I almost forgot to mention one of the biggest events of the past month and that's probably because my brain is protecting me by repressing the memory. I mentioned to you in passing one morning that I needed to trim your shaggy bangs. Mom took note. Then she took action. At some point when I was not present to stop the insanity, you crawled up in her lap and she just reached around and started cuttin', by golly. That is correct. She couldn't see your face, nor the hair she was hacking to death. This is a "before" picture. You like markers, and Zee Fronche, apparently.

An immediate "after" picture does not exist, but rest assured that if it did, you'd look more foolish in it than you do in the one above. And not just because of the mustache and that face. Most of the credit goes to the monk 'do Mom provided you, a haircut that historically, even when done well, is awful.

The good news is your hair may grow back. Someday. Hopefully.

Today Mom asked me how we were going to handle teaching you the facts of life and I responded with a joke too vulgar for your seventeen month letter (maybe next month you'll be mature enough to handle it). She fussed that she was being serious and I told her I was using humor to cope. I tried out some mock explanations and bombed repeatedly. So the other half of this parental team took over and sang you the entire theme song (whisper-y background singing and all) from The Facts of Life. I glanced back and you–sweet, polite, gracious you–had your hands clasped firmly over your ears. And you love our singing, remember? As much as I didn't want to think about teaching the birds and the bees, you were equally uninterested in learning them.

And that's okay. We've got time.

How's about you be our baby for 90 more years?

This is going by too fast. It seems impossible to savor every moment you afford us. We want to rewind them and then live them again in slow motion. But the sequel is always just as good and that seems like a fair exchange for the torture that accompanies letting you grow up.

Love,

Momma (& Mom)