We're having lots of fun and, thank the Lord, we are keeping healthy. 10 months and no colds/flus in our house! We hope that will last!
Michael is a joy in every area of his little life:
His eating is phenomenal. He eats SO much! I am often suprised by how much that kid can pack away! I give him lots of food, and several different items each meal, and he finishes it all practically every time!
Consequently, his bottle eating is dimishing, which is normal as well, so hopefully the process of weaning him off the bottle will be pretty seamless when the time comes. The trick will be to make sure he gets enough fluids because though he can drink from a sippy cup, he spends more time rubbing it against his teeth or letting it dribble down his chin than actually drinking it. Oh well....there's a learning curve for these things!
He loves bread items: muffins, bagels, croissants...just loves them. He also really likes cheese. He gobbles it down like a hungry little mouse! So far, other than green beans, there is nothing he really doesn't like...he loves his fruits and vegetables, which is great and hopefully a trend that will continue!
His sleeping is continuing to do well. His night sleep is EXCELLENT. We put him down between 6:30-7 and don't hear from him from 6:30-7 the next morning. Sometimes a touch earlier, but he is good about being in his bed until we go in to get him. We'll get up when he first starts making noise and throw in a couple of toys which keep him busy until we get him up.
His daytime naps are a funny thing. For a while, he was skipping his morning nap altogether and just taking long afternoon naps. Which kind of annoyed me at first, but I grew to really appreciate since that meant I got a longer nap in too (as long as I could make it until the afternoon!).
Then, a few times, just as I was weighing not giving him a morning nap anymore (Since he wasn't taking it anways) he started taking longer morning naps (still not as long as the afternoon ones, but a bit longer than the normal 30 minutes). But if he did that, he wouldn't sleep the rest of the day. Needless to say, I MUCH preferred the n0 morning nap schedule. Either way, he still gets the opportunity morning and afternoon, and if he wants to nap, he can, and if not, he has toys to play with. So he's pretty content either way.
His crawling is great, but he still drags his belly most of the time. Occasionally, he will take "steps" on his knees, and rocks a lot back and forth...so he's getting close to a real crawl, but not quite there yet.
He can get from sitting to crawling and back to sitting again, so that's great and his opens up some options for him to decide how he is most comfortable at any given moment.
In other areas, Michael is really starting to understand language, which is so exciting. Phrases that we "trained" him to respond to like "how big is Michael" and what not is fun, but what is really exciting is how he is learning about the world around him.
For instance, if you ask Michael "Where's your mouth?" he'll open his mouth wide as can be...every single time! In fact, Michael's mom (Mumma) bought us this "Your Baby Can Read" series which has words and pictures used to help teach the baby to associate them together, and the picture for "mouth" is a kid with his mouth wide open, which baby Michael loves and laughs at every time he sees. Clearly, that's how he learned it. But what is interesting is that today I just showed Michael the word "mouth" without saying it, and without the picture or hearing the word, he opened his mouth--and he did it several times. Not bad!
He also can associate names of people. If I ask where is Daddy he'll look at Michael and where is Mommy and he'll look at me. He loves the crucifix hanging over his bed (from the Campbells) and we taught him that that was Jesus. If we ask him "where is Jesus" he'll look at the crucifix!
So, we're having fun with the ever-growing potential of our little boy, and being surprised that he is always a few steps further ahead than we expected him to be!
