Another letter to Hank.

Oh, Mr. Baby.

You are now nine months old, but I started this entry back when you were right around seven. I hardly ever get a chance to sit down and write, but with the time change, you're going to bed earlier and giving your dad and me some much-needed free time in the evening.

So yes, as I said, you're now nine months old, but you're under the impression that you're about two years old or so. You've been pretty much anti-crawling up until recently, when you started pulling yourself along with your arms, folding one leg underneath you, and using the other foot as a rudder. You can get pretty far using this method. Your favorite thing to do is walk by hanging on to our fingers and pulling yourself up. You've even tried to pry our fingers loose from your hands to attempt standing on your own. It's especially exciting to go for walks (or stomps, as it sounds) right before your bath, when you're barefoot and down to just your diaper.

You haven't officially said your first word yet, but you've transitioned from screaming "DA DA DA DA DA!" to "Ma ma ma ma ma" and now have been working on "Wooowww... wow" at various pitch levels. You also love screaming with ear-splitting delight at cats, dogs and Elmo. Whatever it takes to keep Yo Gabba Gabba and Spongebob out of the house.

You're starting to discover the joys of feeding yourself. It makes a humongous mess, but sometimes I'll spoon out a little soft food onto your high chair tray and let you go to town. You also do a good job with your mesh feeder and the mess is significantly easier to clean up. You haven't been too excited about kiwi or avocado, but you love cottage cheese and bananas. I've also let you try things from my plate - this morning you had some biscuits and gravy - well, just the gravy. Your favorite seems to be tomato soup. You absolutely hate the pureed meat from a jar. I guess I can't blame you on that one.

What else? I'm proud to announce that as of November 1st, you officially have a tooth. You didn't seem to be too bothered by its arrival. You're also getting a lot more hair. Your eyes are more or less blue, and you go back and forth on who you look like. Your new favorite games (in addition to the old standby "Where's the Baby?") are "This Little Piggy" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." You've finally started to show an interest in books, although "Goodnight Moon" seems to make you angry for some strange reason.

Hank, there's just so much you've done over the relatively short time you've been here with us that I can't even sum it all into one blog entry or even an entire baby book. Your daddy and I - and the rest of our family - can't wait to see what you'll do next. We all love you so much that it's hard to even type those words without tearing up. You are our funny, ornery, sweet, smart, stubborn little boy.

Guilt as a maternal instinct.

I have always heaped a lot of guilt on top of myself. It's just part of my sparkling personality. Becoming a mother has not helped alleviate any of it. As you can imagine, it's gotten infinitely worse. Another human being's welfare and personality is up to me (and Kyle, my husband, but I haven't started feeling guilt for someone else - yet).

So as much as I wish that this picture was a cute cartoony representation of my life, it's not. I have to work 37 and a half hours a week in a town 25 minutes away from our house because it is not financially feasible for me to stay home with Hank. This causes much guilt. I feel bad about relying on my mom, my mother-in-law and Kyle (whose job is flexible enough for him to be able to stay home two days a week) to watch him. I feel terrible about shuttling him around from place to place every day. I feel like an absolute monster for even thinking about wanting to do something for myself after work, like shop or hang out with friends... I have yet to do that, by the way, and I've been back to work full-time since mid-August. Christmas shopping will be interesting.

When I come home at night, it's a race against the clock to get everything done. I have approximately four hours before I hit a wall. Like last night... I picked Hank up from my MIL's, made French toast and scrambled eggs for dinner, and then gave Hank a bath in the kitchen sink while Kyle made a Wal-Mart run. I try to have some semblance of a routine for the baby by operating on the "Three B's" schedule every evening - Bath, Bottle, Bed. We got through the first two just fine, with him drifting off to sleep after just a couple ounces, but as soon as I went to lay him down in his swing (because he's become anti-crib for some unknown reason), he was wide awake and flapping his arms and legs excitedly.

As much as I want to spend all my free time with him, I was annoyed and frustrated. I had planned to make myself some homemade hot chocolate with peppermint marshmallows and dye my hair, which I haven't touched since December. I left him strapped in his swing to watch his favorite program, the screen saver on the Apple TV (he can see it from his room when the door's open) so I could walk away and grumble to myself. And then I immediately felt that guilt hit me. I have this cheerful, healthy baby in the next room who just wants to spend a little more of his waking hours with me, and I'm selfishly wanting him to fall asleep so I can have some uninterrupted time to myself. Good lord, I'm getting sniffly just writing about it.

So I went back in to his room and shut the door, turned on some white noise and rocked his swing until he fell asleep - maybe another 10 minutes. By then, the wind was out of my sails, so I just took a shower and went to bed. What's another day of six-inch roots?

I'm still wondering how I strike a balance between me time and baby time... and husband time, too.We need togetherness as much as we need solitude. I guess Hank isn't going to be permanently damaged if we decide to go out on a Saturday night and leave him with grandparents, but it's difficult for me to relax because all I think about is how crappy of a parent I am, leaving him during free time and pawning him off on my parents or Kyle's parents, who probably need a break as much as we do.

Is there an anti-guilt pill someone can prescribe me?