Ten Months

Neil was ten months old yesterday!

No 10 month sticker because he kept taking it off and playing with it

Neil is definitely crawling around now. It's really cute when he crawls into my arms. He also sometimes takes steps but not when he realizes it. We have a little walking toy, and he was reaching for something on it and actually walked 5-6 steps behind it. They say that pulling up on furniture is right behind crawling but Neil isn't really doing that. He pulls up onto his knees but doesn't really go further most of the time, although every so often he does pull himself to a standing position. I still think this is just him feeling he doesn't need to stand but he could if he wanted. He seems to have really good balance now, and if I leave him he can stand on his own for a few seconds at a time. With the crawling, though, as Dave says, he has a very wide turn radius and it's still easy to stop him by putting obstacles in his way. For example, my leg. He doesn't crawl over it and just grunts at what's on the other side.

This is about how long the sticker lasted on his onesie.

Neil really enjoys reading books with us, as well as music and singing. I think he's starting to kind of sing and although he babbles nonsense, sometimes it seems like he's talking but who knows what he's thinking or trying to say. Neil also likes to "dance" by bouncing up and down when we sing or put music on.

We finally have a tooth! It's one of his bottom ones and he's been more clingy and crying more in the middle of the night. He seems to like the teething rings we keep in the fridge now. I've heard of freezing them but wonder if that would be too cold for him. At Neil's 9 month appointment the doctor said he might get a bunch of teeth at once since he hadn't gotten any yet but so far I just see the one tooth. It's impossible to get a picture of it. When I feel it he either bites my finger or licks my finger.

Lately I've been calling Neil "zombie baby" because he opens his mouth wide and I don't even know how to say what he does. It isn't biting. But he comes at us, mouth open wide, and puts his mouth on us. Dave thinks he's trying to kiss us. He does it to both Dave and me and it makes me laugh.

We are starting to give Neil more of what we are eating. Just the other day I gave him some little pieces of lasagna. We also gave him some bits of our Thanksgiving dinner- mashed potatoes, turkey, sweet potato casserole... Neil seems to want solids more than milk at this point. He still drinks breast milk instead of formula and I'm still nursing. He prefers nursing to the bottle but I can already see that he's less interested. I think nursing is more about mommy and baby time than about the milk but I'm not completely sure about that. I'm also trying to teach Neil to kind of bite off pieces of food but he's not good at that yet. He tries to grab whatever it is and stuff the whole thing in his mouth. Right now I can hold a banana and tell him to take a bite and he's getting the hang of it. When we give him animal crackers he doesn't always jam the whole thing in his mouth right away. We can't get him to raise a cup like a sippy cup up all the way, but my friend Jessica helped me teach him how to use a straw. She saw how to do it on youtube and it was ingenious! Now he likes drinking from a straw but I don't want to give him too much liquid that's not milk right now. Plus he drinks a lot and then has a very very full diaper. We tend to give him water with dinner and I don't want a full diaper to wake him up in the middle of the night.

Nursing wise, at this point, I think I'm going to wait until after Christmas/New Year's to make a conscious effort to wean. At that point I'm going to cut out pumps at work (gradually to avoid nasty things like mastitis) but as long as Neil isn't biting I might let him lead as far as weaning on the times I actually nurse him in the evening, and the morning bottle/pump before I go to work. Although I would love to get rid of the morning pump- that would save me 15 minutes of getting ready time in the morning! (But I have to admit I will miss the cuddle/nurse time on the weekends.)

We got some blocks out and for some reason Neil always wants one in his mouth. Maybe this coincides with the first tooth but he crawls around with stuff in his mouth all the time. We're worried he's going to fall or something and choke. So we had to take the smaller sized blocks out and put them away for now. I'm a bit nervous about Christmas, with ornaments and especially the hooks to hang them on the tree. I haven't decided what decorations we will put up this year. Neil really likes the decorations though (I saw that at daycare) so we'll have to make sure we put something up.

I don't usually give updates on sleep but I probably should at this point. Neil still sleeps at night pretty well. He makes a lot of noise but we leave him in there (if it goes on for 10 minutes or more we'll go in but it doesn't usually seem to). He still plays in the middle of the night at various times. He's also used to me getting up in the morning before 5am so on the weekends I hear him and when I'm pumping he's usually moving around but ends up going back to sleep while I'm in the shower (and on his own on the weekends). Nap wise, he might be taking too many naps. The one consistent nap is from 12:30 until he wakes up (usually around 2 hours) at daycare and we follow that at home. I think he takes a morning nap at daycare that varies and they don't write it down most of the time. And most evenings lately he's been back to napping with me after nursing when I get home with him (around 5pm). He still goes to bed for the night between 7:30 and 8:00pm so I'm letting the third nap happen but wondering if it's bad that he's taking 3 naps a day. He also doesn't do it every day so... this is one area I'm kind of playing by ear and watching.

We actually took pictures two separate days. The ones in a short sleeved onesie were on his ten month day exactly but he was really cranky and not really smiling so we tried again the next day (long sleeved onesie).

I'm really happy we're into the holidays- we'll get some solid time off with Neil and I'm excited about that. It was/is about 4 days in a row with Neil for Thanksgiving and I think for Christmas/New Year's it's going to be over 10.