Happy 1st Birthday, Cartman!

Well, Cartman, we made it! One year down! I have to admit, I was super emotional on your actual birthday (Thursday) because I couldn't spend the day with you and was so sad that you are growing up so fast. I seriously am in shock that I have a TODDLER on my hands! But baby boy, you are just one big GOOFBALL and crack me up every day, so I have no doubt that the good times will continue long past that first crazy year. Before we get to the actual birthday rundown, let's talk about you at 12 months.

Believe it or not, I have NO SICKNESS to report this month (other than a minor cold that required no meds)! Hallelujah! You cut two new teeth this month and now have a total of 8 - 4 top and 4 bottom. Your smile just gets more and more precious every day!

You are still a stud at eating and are on total table food - you love yogurt, oatmeal, bananas, deli turkey, any veggie (No seriously, if it's green, orange, or yellow, you down it. Love that!), graham crackers, yogurt melts, ravioli, and meatballs. You decided this month that you HATE chicken...like, chew it up, make a face, and spit it back out, hate it...so getting any protein in you is quite a challenge since chicken is our primary meat. Luckily, you LOVE your whole milk (no more formula!) and drink about 20 ounces of it a day, so I don't worry about the protein too much. The one challenge we have on our hands with you in the nutrition department is getting you to give up those bottles. We've tried and tried and tried, but stubborn bug, you will just NOT drink milk from a sippy cup. We've tried straw cups, warming the milk, putting chocolate syrup in the milk, rocking you while giving you the cup, everything (!!) and you will have NONE of it. I've just decided you're not ready, so we'll work more on this over the summer. For now, I'm just letting it go. It's just not worth the fight!

As far as sleep goes, you ROCK baby boy. You are down from 7/7:30pm until 6:30/7am every night. Over the past two months, I think we've seriously heard you peep once. Maybe. And it was a short peep while teething. We LOVE YOU for this!! As far as naps go, we think you'll be ready to drop down to one nap a day over the summer. We do this occasionally on weekends when we are out and about, and you're fine with it. On an every day basis though, you typically take 2 naps still - one from 9:30-11am and a second from 2-3pm.    

No walking yet. We think you are very close but just don't seem interested, honestly. You've gotten much more confident this month walking behind your push walker, let go and stand for a few seconds more, and are cruising more one-handed, so who knows. Could be tomorrow, could be two months - I honestly have no idea!

Ok, so let's talk about the birthday celebration! We woke you up on your birthday morning by singing you "Happy Birthday" which you loved and then spent some snuggle time in our bed. After a bottle and getting you dressed, you discovered your birthday present - a new climber for the backyard! You LOVED it and I think will like it even more once you start walking.

You then had a great day at school and we came home early to take you for a walk and to the park. Then, we made you your favorite dinner (lasagna) and it was a hit!

Since it was your actual birthday, we decided you had to have dessert even though we wanted to save the cupcake for your birthday party, so we let you "practice" eating dessert with an iced sugar cookie. No trouble there - you dug right in and ate the whole thing!

We had such a great day with you and even better birthday party today! Post on that coming tomorrow...this momma is wiped OUT! Love you, buddy!

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!