Monthly Update - 10 & 11 months old

Dear Seamonkey:

It's been a busy summer! I didn't take nearly as many pictures and videos that I would have liked in these past two months. We run around so much that many times we forget the camera, and I need to do a better job remembering to capture all the little moments of your childhood. Despite the pictures though, I am confident that we are making lots of good memories for you.

This month, we've seen alot of this face:

You are having a terrible time with your teething. You've had two teeth come in at once, your left eye tooth and your right front. You don't really drool at all, and you don't seem to get fevers...the worst part is that it turns your personality from happy to evil in 2.3 seconds. It prevents you from falling asleep and once you do, makes you wake up crying quite a bit. We give you lots of baby orajel and cold freezy toys which do help you. The good news is that once we've relieved your pain, you're back to being your fabulous pleasant self.

You still don't stop moving. This is another familiar sight:A blurred image of you crawling away from me. One of your favorite things to do is to crawl up and down the hallway - and you are remarkably fast for a little thing. You are still cruising around, and now you've gotten fancy using only one hand. It's only a matter of time before you're walking. We've been encouraging you with the use of your car walker:

You get so proud of yourself that you applaud, and don't realize that you're standing on your own:

Then you do this weird trick that you taught yourself - putting your hands on your head. This may be the "so big!" that your Aunt M taught you - I can't be sure because we don't teach you that at home.

Speaking of tricks, you stopped doing "bye bye" for some reason. You won't do it no matter how many of us are waving back at you. You're still babbling in your own language, but still no real words yet, even though we're trying desperately to teach you some basics. You've also started this move:

Which you'll do in response to "wahoo!". And then there's this new trick which I'm going to say you got from your father:

You are getting better at feeding yourself:We've been trying to increase the amount of table food you get, but unfortunately, after a few bites you start winging it over the sides of your highchair. When that happens, it's a sign you clearly won't be eating anymore, so we take it away. You're still eating baby food, and I'm trying to figure out a good way to get you off of it. I have found that this part of your life is the most challenging for us - trying to transform you from a baby to a toddler. We've gotten very used to doing things the baby way, and we are starting to see that you are growing up fast!You are becoming very head strong - if I stop you from doing something, like standing up in the bathtub, or dunking your face into the suds (you end up choking yourself) or gnawing on the crib rails, you start to throw a tantrum. When you do, you try to grab me and bite me. Isn't that special? So discipline is something else we've started to explore. We're trying to figure out how to best handle these situations, yelling NO!, or ignoring it, or distracting you from the behavior or a combo of all those things. I know that what we do now will affect your behavior going forward, so we want to get things right. It looks like you are going to test us at every turn!

But most of the time you're a very good boy. We took you camping with us and you held up better than mommy did, that's for sure.

You still love the pool, especially the one that Grandma and Grandpa bought you for the yard.

It's been a blessing during these hot days. We can't wait to put you back into swimming lessons after you turn one. We can NOT believe that in a few short weeks you will one year old! This time has really flown. You are an amazing, adorable, wonderful little boy. We love you very much!