11 Months Old

 

Yikes.  We are getting much too close to his birthday for my liking.  There is some stupid commercial out right now (I think for Dreft?) that says something like,

"You have a child forever, but a baby for only 1 year".

Um, no.  Baby4Life.

Unfortunately, I have to face the facts - Ben is totally and rapidly developing into a little person more and more and as sad as it can be, he is a joy to be around every day and I LOVE all of the things he is learning.  My friend Charisse and I were talking a few weeks ago.  I mentioned to her how exhausted we had become as Ben started to get himself around at a much faster pace, and she told me that for her, it would take a couple weeks to adjust to each new stage with Drayk and then she would be good for a month or two until things changed again.  I am happy to say that I completely agree with that.  Now that we have adjusted to Ben and his new energy/mobility, things feel manageable again.

A new fun change from my last post is that Ben has become SO CUDDLY!  I attribute this to his increased binky usage.  There must be something about it that pacifies him allows him to chill out for a few moments and rest his head on us.  I LOVE IT.

We have a WALKER!  These next few weeks are bound to be interesting as he learns to master his new skill.

Nap time continues to be the same - a shorter nap  (45 minutes to 1 hour) in the morning followed by a much longer afternoon nap.  He still goes down at 8 pm and wakes at 7 am. 

We have successfully eliminated Ben's mid-morning nursing session, so YAY for not pumping at work anymore.  I used to kind of enjoy the forced 25 minute break to pump, but I am not sad to see it go.  Ben now nurses at 7 am, 12 pm, 4:30 pm, 8 pm and then usually once between 4-6 am.  We also offer him a "real" breakfast, lunch and dinner now - whether he eats much of it is another situation all together.  I have decided that I can't really stress much about this though - seems to be a common thing with babies from what I'm told...(except with Bronson "hungry-man" Broady, of course).

Ben is in 12 month and some 18 month clothing.  We broke out some of his 18 month old PJ's a few weeks back along with some pants (that are a little long).  With our upcoming move, I did spend some time organizing and boxing up all of his clothes that no longer fit and it was fun (read: sad) going through all of his teeny-tiny gear of the past.

There have not been any new words out of him lately, but there are a few new tricks he has learned.

• Waving - You can ask him to "say hi" or "wave hi" or "wave" and he will usually do it almost instantly.
• He loves to turn the pages in his books now when we read.
• I had been putting Ben on my lap with his legs on either side of me and would bounce him (like a horse).  He LOVES it.  So now, when he crawls up on me, he will look at me with the funniest expression and start to bounce himself until I do it again.