The past month has flown by! It seems like I was just writing the 10 month blog post. The Peanut is just getting more fun by the day. He has quite the magnetic personality and charming little smile…mix that with those baby blues, and he can pretty much get you to do his bidding.
Here are some highlights:
Teeth: There is no longer any concern about whether or not this kid is going to have teeth…I think the concern now is whether or not he’s going to get them all instantaneously! :) This morning I noticed that his 3rd tooth on the bottom is poking through (the one on the right of his bottom two), and we keep checking every day to see if his next front tooth, as well as the one to the right of that, has made an appearance. He seems to be handling the whole thing pretty gracefully. The only thing that tips us off that something is going on is that his eating habits change a little bit. We will soon have a big toothy grin for pictures. :)
Crawling: we’re still not “officially” crawling, but P can get himself around decently well. He has started doing the army crawl (mixed in with a little inch worm) to get places, although he seems to have a perceived limit about “worth it” distances…he’ll scooch after some things with zeal, but move them 3 inches further, and he’s no longer interested. He goes from sitting up to laying down and back with such ease…it’s almost comical to think about what he used to look like when he would start falling to one side or the other…which takes us to a flashback...
In order to “graduate” to the next room in the church nursery, babies have to be able to sit up well, which includes “catching themselves” when they fall over. Each week we would show up to the baby room with P, and the conversation would go something like this:
Lovely church nursery lady: Oh hi, P! Good to see you again! (I’m sure they’re starting to think, “You look like you could eat the other babies in here…is your mom already struggling with the idea of you growing up, which is why she continues to bring you to the newborn room?) So is he still not sitting up?
Me: Well, he can sit up…the issue is that he still falls backwards quite often.
Lovely church nursery lady: Does he not catch himself?
Me: Do you mean put his arm out?
Lovely church nursery lady: Yes. Does he keep himself from falling when he starts to go over?
Me: Uh…definitely not. He prefers the face-plant method of catching himself…that, or the fall-backwards- and-get-that-unmistakable-look-of-horror-on-his-face-when-he-realizes-that-he’s-about-to- hit-his-head-on-the- floor method.
I never thought we’d move up rooms! :) But he’s now holding his own in the “crawling room.” It will be interesting to see how long it takes for him to move up to the walking room. :)
While he doesn’t pull up, he does seem to get a thrill from standing while holding onto something (be it the coffee table or a suitcase). He always gets this huge grin plastered across his face while he’s standing there. He also (unfortunately) has developed an affinity for what we like to refer to as the “trust fall maneuver,” where he will push off of whatever he is holding on to, throw his arms out to the side, get a huge, goofy grin on his face and fall straight back. Fortunately for him, someone has always been there to catch him…unfortunately for us, I think the only way to teach him to not do this is to let him fall, and I’m not thinking I want to do that…so the game continues.
Tricks: Adding to the list, we now wave (albeit with some inconsistency) good bye. This happened over Thanksgiving…and it’s pretty darn cute. Then there’s his fascination with balance…as an example, he will put his pacifier on his crib railing so it’s teetering back and forth and will proceed to flick at it with his middle and ring fingers to make it spin. It’s hysterical. I’ve seen him do the same thing with a spoon on his high chair tray. (Note: we decided to go ahead and move his mattress down in his crib once I started finding him sitting up in there when I would go in to get him and once he started throwing his pacifier over the edge and peeking over. I didn’t want to hear a thump in the middle of the night. :))
This is before we lowered the mattress...he just looks so big sitting up in his crib!Things he loves: His books and toys. Every morning he goes through his bin of books and baskets of toys and pulls out each individual item and seems to study it, as if to insure that nothing had changed about it from the day before. He loves to be read to (with our favorites right now including The Wheels on the Bus, any of our Sandra Boynton books, and Who’s Coming to Our House?) and at times will cry when we come to the last page of a book. I try to tell him that the beauty of books is that you can re-read them or just pick up another one, but he can be hard to convince at times. He’s loving his stackable rings, and associates the smallest, red ring with applause. :) He can put all of the rings building up to the red one on or just the red ring alone, and when the red one goes on, clapping ensues. It doesn’t matter who puts the red ring on…it could be him; it could be his dad; but the red ring goes on, and P claps. It’s awesome.
Book check.
Don't worry...we continue to eat our books. Just keeping it real for you.
He also has a little Fisher Price tool bench that he loves to play with. He uses the little hammer to bang away at the shapes…
He loves to go outside and gets the biggest goofy grin on his face when you unlock the front door. Checking the mail is a daily highlight, I’m sure.
He loves his family. He gets so excited to see his dad, me, his grandparents, his great-grand parents, his Aunt Debby and his Aunt KiKi. He just lights up. I love it.
It's too bad they don't like each other...
Books before bed with Dad.
His new favorite game involves opening and closing the bedroom door while lying on his stomach. Tonight as he was opening the door for the 25th time, he waved at me. What a goober.
He has recently taken interest in a set of Hoops and YoYo stuffed animals from his Aunt Debby. They are a new favorite play thing.
Eating: Depending upon whether or not he’s getting a tooth, P has consistently been a pretty good eater over the past month. Just this month we started giving him bread and turkey, and he loves both. I also recently made a lot of “big people food” that I pureed until lightly chunky, and he has willingly eaten all of those, too. I am thankful that he seems to be willing to eat most anything I put in front of him, although if he had it his way, he would only eat food that he could feed himself. I think lunch is his favorite meal because he can do just that. Admittedly, we may have to “encourage” (read as “distract”) him to eat by singing, making funny noises, etc. What always comes to mind is something I read in a book that said to not do something with your child that you won’t be willing to do years down the line. I hope that we won’t be sitting next to him in the lunchroom in kindergarten singing “Open, Shut Them.” :)
Fears: It should be noted that P is afraid of aluminum foil and of the cats’ food bag being opened. He has seemingly overcome his fear of moving/singing stuffed animals. :)
Words/Sounds: He still doesn’t seem to be associating words with things, at least as far as I can tell. The syllables “ma ma” have yet to be uttered in my presence. I am legitimately considering going by “a-gee-gee-gee.” Recently his go-to phrase has been, “Uh-huh.” It’s fun to have pretend conversations with him…they might go a little something like this:
Me: P, do you love me?
P: Uh-huh.
Me: Do you want to take a 3 hour nap so mommy can get things done?
P: Uh-huh.
Me: Do you think mommy should take a nap, too? Daddy will pick up the slack, right?
P: Uh-huh.
Physical Appearance: The Peanut is a big boy. He weighs 23 lbs., 5 ounces...no wonder I have some pretty awesome arm muscles. The reason I know his exact weight is because I had to take him to the doctor yesterday. He is so chunky that he developed a yeast infection behind his knees. There's seemingly not a lot of air circulation going on back there. Poor little guy. :( But don't worry...the medicine should clear things up in 6 weeks?!?! He has almost white blonde hair (blonder than J and I ever were as babies), and it's getting long enough so that it's curling in the back. I think a haircut may be in our future sooner rather than later. His baby blues are still to die for, and now that he's "thinning out" a little bit and his face isn't a little round circle anymore, I can see that he has my jaw line...although I'm not holding my breath to have someone notice that in the grocery story line.
You can kind of see his little curls in this one.
P at 11 months with his number one fans.Little Peanut, we love you so very much, and you are more and more fun to be with every day! :)
