11 months

hypnotized by the avocado oracle...

william's mom's favorite cutie pose: when he is speed crawling and suddenly stops and turns around to see if you're watching him.

i have been taking a bit of a blogging break. thomas was sick/clingy/needy and my mom was with us for a week. no energy to write, even though there is stuff going on. so i am going to do some lists - i don't want to forget stuff, so this is more for recording sake...

piano player in the making! look at his excellent banging form :)

his appetite hasn't changed much - still takes infant cereal with milk in the morning, number 3 jars for lunch and dinner. added table foods - tofu, soft chicken or fish, steamed veggies, pb sandwich. so for lunch and dinner, he usually has one 6-oz jar and random bits of table/finger foods until he doesn't want to open for food any more. every day he takes around 8 oz of milk plus whatever he gets from me. i try to limit snacking to one in the late morning and one in late afternoon - milk, fruit or some cheese/crackers. here's a big difference b/w william and i: william likes to pack him full of as much food as he can. even after the meal, he will follow thomas around with a spoon and try to plug up that last bit of empty stomach. ha ha :) for me, as soon as i get 3 rejections of food, i take him out of the high chair and meal-time is over.

anytime i hand him an orange, he closely examines and then tries to bite it.

---------------> the Thomas update:

he is 11 months this week and happily, back to his "normal" wonderful self. when he got sick last month, we did a lot of cuddling/stuff we don't normally do b/c we knew he wasn't feeling well. so everytime he woke up at night (at least a couple times a night) not able to breath well, we would pick him up and rock him until he could settle down again. well, two nights of that and he learned pretty quick that mom and dad were responding to crying. babies are SMART and learn REALLY fast! then he had two more teeth come in the week after he recovered so that further messed with his sleep. he is finally back to his old pattern of sleeping at 8 and waking up around 6-6:30. no coddling needed. william sometimes goes to sleep with him, but that is just cause william loves to co-sleep. big softy!
a couple times or more, a day he plays by himself pretty well. i had thought that i was doomed because around the end of october, all of a sudden, he didn't want to play by himself. i thought it was the beginning of a needy/separation anxiety phase! but a week ago, he just as suddenly decided that it was ok to play by himself. whew...

wondering what to do with all those travel size hotel shampoos and soaps?


he is soooo playful now. he can clap, throw a ball to you, hand you things, open the door in response to a knock, and he imitates things he sees me do, like when i put my head down on a soft blanket, he crawls over and puts his head down next to mine! of course, the next moment, he is off again looking for the next interesting thing to play with. he "reads" his little board books and gets excited with every page he turns himself. he talks so much, very cute. i try to remember to keep up a stream of conversation with him. he also discovered magnets - now at least once a day, he grabs them and sticks them back on the dishwasher door over and over.
another funny tidbit - we finally had to buy formula. he started drinking milk out of a bottle at the beginning of November - so we ran out. ha ha... until now, we have gotten away with free formula (from the hospital, a couple cases of ready to use bottles from the gadads and a lot from our doctor's office).

i still nurse him, but more for comfort, about 2 sometimes 3 times a day. i don't think i have more than 4-6 ounces (that's both sides) and he is so very efficient, it goes pretty quick unless he is sleepy. i think i might nurse this way until the cold/winter season is over just to provide him with those antibodies. i guess it depends on when he gets tired of how slow it is compared to the bottle.

his naps are so inconsistent i never know what i am going to get day to day. that is one of the things i really haven't tried to train on. sometimes he naps in the morning, sometimes he doesn't. sometimes he naps for 30 minutes, other times, 2 hours. i usually wait until he is sleepy so i don't have to let him cry too much. but it is hard to tell too. i used to think the eye rubs were a sure sign of nap time readiness but there have been sometimes when he just has eye sand or an eyelash in his eye that causes it. sometimes i put him down for his nap and he just starts howling away. that's when i know he isn't ready. i have tried letting him cry - but after trying it for 3 days, i've learned that when he cries for a long time (30-45 minutes) before falling asleep (b/c i think he should take a nap instead of going by him), he only sleeps for 20-30 minutes. and he wakes up crying. every baby is different, so for thomas, i don't force naps. i just wait until he is tired enough to fall asleep when i put him in the crib with minimal objections. sometimes he is so tired, i push his head down and he doesn't even object. :)


------------------> my mom's visit

my mom drives me bonkers. she stayed with us for 8 days until this past sunday and now she has moved all the way out in sacramento. that will make visits a lot more time consumming. but as crazy as she is, i have to admit she really knows how to play with Thomas, babies in general. he just LOVES her, like crazy. every morning, as soon as he sees her, he would start talking, a steady stream of excited babble and reach out for her as soon as she was close enough. she talks to him a lot, and does a lot of motion games that he really loves. he actually learned how to clap and shake his head from her. and of course, playing the piano. he loves to sit in her lap while she plays. these pics - he is trying to uncover her face, look what a little ham he is! he just eats it up. like a little dog watching to see what she will do next.

of course, even though it was nice to see her relax around thomas, now it will take me two weeks to unwind from her being in the house. she would follow me around all day (ok, not all day, but definitely over half) telling me what i should do, what would work better, what she wishes i would do, what she thinks william is doing on the computer at night, what i should rearrange, that i should not have a cat in the house, on and on. it made my head spin but i knew it was temporary so that made it more tolerable. for christmas, i am going to see if i can lure her back here with thomas. try to avoid the 2 hour drive if we can...

------------------> reading again! finally...

since thomas has decided it is ok to play by himself, i have started reading again. also at night, instead of sitting at the computer, i'll read. i have forgotten how enjoyable it is to read a good book. "what to expect the first year" baby care guide, "an inconvenient truth" by al gore and "big russ and me: father and son" by tim russert. all three of them are really good.

here's my little go green earth plug: read "an inconvenient truth" if you have the time. it is a really quick read and will just blow you away. this has nothing to do with politics, more about making sure that our kids and grandkids have a future worth living on this planet. i truly believe that if everyone contributes a little, we can at least slow the terrible destruction down. the facts of planetary change are hard to ignore. read it or rent the DVD, now available.