Dear Ben,

You are 18 months now! and don’t look a day over 12 months.. Really. You don’t. It is unbearably cute.

The biggest news I have is that you are a guitar player! We noticed long ago that whenever we would see a street musician you would stop whatever you were doing and plunk on the ground at their feet, staring in total amazement. Sometimes they were terrible, but you didn’t care. You could sit there for hours.

The other day someone let you play their ukulele and you were in pure heaven, immediately laying it on your lap and plucking away. You cried and cried when they took it back and ever since then you have been trying to play the mop, your push toys, the rake and the broom. You have been pretty much air guitaring all over the house!

The video above is of you playing the ukulele we got you. You strummed and sang and carried it around with you all day. I think it must run in the family because when dada was little he made a guitar out of cardboard and carried that around playing air guitar too. The sad news is that you broke your ukulele three times that first day. I think the thing is toast. We glued it with super glue over and over but it can’t withstand your rockstar ways. I think we need to get a plastic one. Anyone out there have one? or know of any good ones?

Anyway, I could tell you about all the words you say, Gato, agua, dada, mama, owl, apple, out, up, yellow, ball, etc, I could tell you about how you carjack the other kids at the park. (Yes, it’s pretty much as bad as it sounds.) You stop their car, grab them by the their t-shirt and escort them out of the vehicle. Before they know what him them, you are in and off! We’re working on that.

Oh, and I think your biting phase might be over. You were experimenting with that for the last week or so, getting spazzy and biting me, the babysitter, your dad. We kept stopping you and saying “No!” very firmly, but it didn’t help. What did help was when you absentmindedly bit your very own foot and screamed and cried because it turns out you bit down pretty hard. I saw the teeth marks.

You haven’t done any biting since.

But what I really want to say is that I admire you.
I admire you for how much you love the world and the people in it.
I admire you for how unafraid you are, how curious you are and how much you want to learn.
I admire you for how clear you are about what you want and that you are willing to ask for it even if you don’t always get it.
I admire you for how honest you are with your love, your affection, and your joy.
I admire you for your joy
and how you know that moment by moment things can be different.
I admire you for how quickly you forgive,
and forget.