First Easter

We had a great day celebrating Carter's first Easter! We got up early this morning to open his Easter basket. He got a new truck, V-tech ball, 2 books, a stuffed dinosaur and sported some awesome new PJ's too! :)

We then headed on to church at Hope Fellowship where he again sported some amazing duds! He was in a great mood before church and even let us take a few pics! (Although it appears that Mommy may have needed another cup of coffee at this point...)

After church, we came home to rest and recharge for a family-packed afternoon. After a nap followed by a walk, we headed over to Blake's parents' house for lunch with Nick, KK, Gramma Pat, and my parents. We had a blast and you were SUCH a little party boy the whole time!

Last stop of the day was back to my parents' house for one last Easter surprise. We had hoped the little man would also nap there (they have an old crib set up), but apparently he had just had too much fun and refused it. :) Can't say we didn't try, right?

Carter was spoiled yet again with a Build-a-Bear stuffed bunny, Sing-a-majig, and two new books! We had such a blast celebrating today and look forward to our first Easter egg hunt next year! God is good! :)

11 Months

Chunky monkey, you are 11 months today! I am currently planning your 1st birthday party and cannot believe I am about to be a mommy to a TODDLER! In so many ways, I feel like you were JUST born, and in so many other ways, I feel like you've been part of our life forever. You are SO MUCH FUN right now and are EVERYWHERE! You crawl at about 90 mph and cruise like a maniac. You stand without support for a few seconds from time to time (accidentally I think), and you will walk a few steps holding onto our hands, so I'm not sure whether or not you'll be walking soon or not. Your daddy and I both walked before we were a year old, but I'm just FINE though with you taking some time on that front, so baby boy, don't rush it! You are exhausting enough as it is now! :)

On the sleep front, this month has been rough as far as naps are concerned. Your nights are still just the BEST and you sleep for 11-12 hours each night (7:30-6:30/7) without a peep. Naps are a rougher subject - you are a CHAMP typically at home and naps last 1-2 hours each. At daycare, not so much. Your naps there are MUCH shorter...usually 25-40 minutes each. I've tried EVERYTHING I can think of to help you get more sleep - moving your crib, a white noise machine, changing up the times - but it just seems to be too loud of an environment for you to truly relax in, so most nights you catnap either in the car seat on the way home or in the stroller on our evening walk. I'm okay with that since it's not messing up your nights, but poor thing, you are SO overtired during the week that it just hurts me to watch. Fortunately, you are about to move to the scheduled mid-day nap from 12-2:30, so hopefully you'll sleep the whole time once those become the norm.

As far as eating goes, you are a rockstar! You eat just about anything we put in front of you, but you are NOT a fan of bread or cheese. (Although, ironically, you LOVE goldfish and cheez-its.) You are on total table food at this point eating 3 meals a day plus 1-2 snacks and drinking water/diluted juice like a champ out of a sippy cup. You do NOT appreciate me putting formula in your sippy though and seem to get a little worked up if I expect you to drink it that way, but we'll get rid of those bottles eventually. Some of your favorite foods right now are yogurt, peas/carrots, applesauce, rice, chicken, ravioli, ground turkey, graham crackers, bananas, and vanilla wafers. 

You have become quite the talker recently and seem to attach any consonant sound to "a" - you've got baba, dada, mama, wawa, gaga, and vava down, and you are especially found of grunting, growling, and screaming. (Lovely.) Tonight, I listened to you talk yourself to sleep and it was just precious. We now put soft books in your bed, so you "read" yourself to sleep at night and "read" when you first get up in the morning. It is the cutest thing in the world! (And secretly, I tell myself it's making you smarter...)

You also got a new tooth this month on the bottom, so we have 3 top and 3 bottom at this point that I know of, although I'm fairly certain more are coming in. I get a little worried because most of your teeth are on one side of your mouth, but you'll even out eventually right? :) You started brushing your teeth this month and giggle every time we do it. You are Mr. Independent and love to chew on the toothbrush brush your own teeth, too. Such a big boy!

Well, I think that's about it! We LOVE this age and are so excited to plan your first birthday party! We are so blessed to be your parents and love you so much little one!

STATS:

Weight: 22.5/23 pounds

Height: 31 inches

Clothes: 12 month or 12-18 month

Diapers: Size 3

10 Months (3 days late)

Well, mister, you are in double digits now! 10 months old! What a month this has been...I sound like a broken record, I know, but you were pretty much sick the entire month. :( I am SO ready for summer so all this sickness can go away!!! At your 9-month "well" check, you had a sinus infection so you were put on antibiotics (yet again), and while on those, you can down with a random 3-day virus where your only symptom was fever. Two days post-antibiotics, you came down with a stomach bug that lasted about 5 days, and then two days after that, you came down with yet another cold. Buddy, you are absolutely GIFTED at picking up sickness. It is by far your strongest skill. I've asked multiple pediatricians how to prevent you from getting sick all the time, and other than being sure you get lots of sleep and washing your hands, they all say the same thing - I can't. It's just something you have to go through to build up your immunity and it just takes time. Lovely.

The good news for you is that your sickness has absolutely NOT held you back from growing like a champ. You're SOOO tall (over 30 inches now!) and kind of a chunky monkey again...I think we might be on the downhill of a growth spurt because the last few days, you have been a TANK. 25-30 oz a day of formula plus three meals and a snack. BUT, I'm really trying to let you be the dictator of how much you eat (within reason)...I really don't want mealtime to become a battleground, and I'm trying to let YOU learn your hunger/fullness cues, so until you start spitting food out (your new thing) or turning your head away, I let you keep eating. Here's an example of what you might eat on a typical day...

Breakfast: baby yogurt, fruit, and cheerios
Lunch: veggie, string cheese, bread of some sort
Snack: yogurt melts and/or nutri-grain bar
Dinner: turkey and veggie ravioli, veggie, and applesauce

Let's talk play time...you are a SPEED DEMON on the crawling and can get what you want to go in a hurry! You love walking behind your push walker, cruising around furniture, and playing in your new playroom. (We cleared out my old "office" to make it a baby-friendly room for you to go crazy in.) You have started becoming a little daredevil and will let go and stand by yourself for a second or two. I'm SO NOT READY for you to be standing/walking, but I'm not sure I can stop it at this point, so we'll go with it. I am fairly certain that you'll be walking around your first birthday party, but time will tell.

Oh, sleep. This is just not your spiritual gift, honey. You've been good and sleeping all night, but this month you become a morning person. Like a 5:30-6am morning person. This is NOT good news for your mom and dad, especially on weekend mornings. We've tried feeding you and putting you back to bed, but you will have none of it and are ready to greet the day before the sun comes up. We've tried later bedtimes, earlier bedtimes, more naps, less naps, nothing works. You are up no matter what by 6:30, so we'll just learn to roll with it.

Well, that about sums it up, I guess! We look forward to seeing what month 10 holds for you and love you so much!

Guesstimated Stats:
Weight: 21.5ish pounds
Height: 30ish inches
Clothing: 12 month

Walking!

(Behind a push walker!)

I think he got tired during the 2nd video - he needed a break or two. :)

Our Valentine

Carter loved his first Valentine's card and new push walker! :) (Although his favorite part of the morning was eating the envelope.) Happy Valentine's Day!

9 Months

9-Month Stats:

21 pounds (50th percentile)

29.5 inches long (95th percentile)

Size 6/9-month or 6/12-month clothing

Size 3 diapers

Little charmer, you are 9 months old! I can't believe it! Sweet one, this month has just been FUN with you! You are ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE! You discovered your hands and knees this year and your little army crawl turned into a full-fledged, all fours, FAST crawl! You can now get where you want to go...and in a hurry! You also mastered the art of pulling up this month, so your days are spent crawling from one place to another, standing just about anywhere you have a place to hold on. You will take a few uncertain "cruising" steps once you stand, but, at home at least, you won't cruise any more than that. We have begun the process of "baby-proofing" because you opened your first drawer last weekend. I have a feeling you are about to become VERY tiring!

So, on the schedule front, you are not all THAT different than last month, although you've stretched your awake time a little bit. Typically, you wake up around 7 in the morning and take your first nap around 10. Most days, that nap lasts until 11 or 11:30, and you then nap again mid-afternoon, usually between 2:30 and 3:30, and this nap is typically a quick one. That's really all you nap because you sleep 11-12 hours at night. This month, you have been a CHAMP in the sleep department. You have had no night wakings (knock on wood!) at all ever since those two top teeth came in about 3 weeks ago and typically sleep from 7:30pm until 7am without a single peep. Speaking of teeth, you now have four - two top and two bottom, and your little bucktoothed smile melts my heart!

On the food front, you have really taken off with the table food this month, and you actually ate your first school lunch (table food - no jar!) yesterday. You've been doing all table food at dinner for a week or two now, and we are adding lunch slowly. Some of your favorites are chicken, carrots, noodles, bananas, banana bread (you ate a WHOLE SLICE the other day at breakfast!), pancakes, rice, green beans, and Gerber cheese puffs. At school this month, you celebrated your classmate's first birthday and got your first piece of cake. According to your teachers, you loved it and even licked the icing off your fingers. That's my boy! (I'm an icing addict...I can take or leave the actual cake.) You still eat cereal or yogurt with fruit for breakfast, but that's only because you are still taking your Prevacid and it has to be stirred in. On the formula front, you have really cut back this month and typically only take in 20-25 ounces a day. (You used to be closer to 30.) Because of that and all your exercise, you have really leaned out!

You have also really taken off on your talking and sign language. You clearly do the sign for milk whenever you are thirsty and will say just about any consonant combined with "a" - ba, da, ma, wa, ga, etc. We clearly get "mama," "wawa," and "baba," so we are hoping for "dada" sometime soon. You also have started nodding/head banging and shaking your head, although you don't know what those mean yet. You can clap your hands, too, but won't do it on command.

Well, that's about it, I guess! You are a JOY and your daddy and I can't imagine our lives without you, handome! Love you SO much!

8 Months

Well, better late than never, right bud? You are 8 months old! 2/3 of a year! Sweet boy, this was another month of ups and downs. We'll get the downs out of the way first...this was another month where we battled a lot of sickness. You started this past month out with croup which then turned into a sinus infection, so you had to go back on antibiotics which was no fun. This also caused a little bit of a sleep regression which was tough on all of us, but fortunately we seemed to get that under control after a week or two. You still have a runny nose (4 weeks later...) but the doctor thinks that is all related to your teething.

On that note, you have a top tooth!!! The top right tooth officially popped through on January 2, 2012! Thank goodness - that was rough for a few days! I have a feeling the top left one isn't far behind because when I put Orajel on your little gums, you have ridges and bumps EVERYWHERE. The doctor thought he saw at least two more coming very soon, so we may not be out the woods teething-wise just yet.

So, let's talk schedule. You usually wake up between 7 and 7:30 and boy, you are hungry! You eat about 8 ounces of formula and then eat 7 ounce bottles after that at 11, 3, and bedtime. You eat solids three times a day - oatmeal and fruit in the morning, veggies and cheerios at lunch, and a meat/veggie combo and fruit (sometimes) at dinner. (You do NOT have a sweet tooth like your mommy and daddy and really don't like plain fruit other than pears.) Napwise, you typically take a short nap (30-45 minutes) around 9:30 and then take a long nap around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon. After that, it's play, play, play until I pick you up at 4:30. You usually don't nap after 3ish unless we go for a car ride somewhere...those are your Kryptonite. You just can't stay awake, no matter how hard you try! We put you to bed around 7 and (usually!) you sleep until 7 the next morning. Unless you are sick or have teeth coming in, you are a ROCK STAR at sleeping and usually give us 11-12 hours. We LOVE you for that! :)

On the development front, you are killing it, little man! This month, you really took off with your little army crawl and we are starting to see signs that you will have a full-fledged, all fours crawl any day now! You do this crazy little downward dog move that cracks us up where you go from sitting to literally an inverted V on your hands and feet. Little gymnast?? :) You bounce on your knees, pat your hands, and flap your arms all the time and it cracks me up! You especially love to flap your arms and bounce when you are happy about something. You can pull up to standing at the coffee table now and we've seen you do it in my parents' crib, but you can't seem to figure it out in your home crib. (I'm okay with this!) You have also definitely started saying "mama" very clearly, but you sadly only say that when you're upset. You put absolutely EVERYTHING in your little mouth...including magazines, paper, dog toys (sick), and cords. You usually get upset when I have to take the paper away, but you rip off pieces with your teeth and try to swallow it. You actually choked on paper in a restaurant once so that is a big no-no now. Speaking of "no-no," you think the word no is hysterical and instantly smile when we say it. I think we are in trouble!!!

You are definitely slowing down on the weight gain front...we think you are right at 20 or 20.5 pounds now, and I'm expecting about 21 at your 9-month appointment next month. You definitely seem taller, but I have no idea how tall you are. You are still wearing some 6-9, and mostly 6-12 month clothes and size 3 diapers, so no changes there. We love you little man!