Are We There Yet?: Squatting

Here is where Noah is at at 10 months old:

-He's 31 inches tall, 100th percentile.

-He weighs 20lbs 5oz naked (after a good nursing). That's about 35th percentile, and almost a pound gain in less than a month!

-He is 5th percentile for 'weight for length'

-His head circumference is 19 inches..

-He wears size 3 diapers during the day, and size 4 diapers at night (we just switched to size 4s the night before he turned 10 months because of night-leaking).

-He wears 18 month clothing. His sleepers, onesies, and shirts fit perfectly, his 18 month pants are a little bit long.

-He has 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom.

-He nurses every 2 hours or so all day long (two nursings during each awake period), and once overnight. He nurses 7-8 times in a 24 hour period.

-He has one meal of solids (mostly purees) at dinnertime, and throughout the day he might have little nibbles of what I'm eating. I'm careful about what he has, but I don't follow a specific '3 day wait' rule anymore.

-He is obsessed with fruit. If he sees a piece of fruit and isn't allowed to eat it, he has a little hissy fit.

-He's still constipated pretty much all the time. We have only a couple of normal poops in a month.

-After a long break, he's starting to show a little bit of interest in the sippy cup, although he is really terrible at getting water out of it. he chews more than sucks. But at least it's water in there! He seems to love the taste of water now, whereas it disgusted him a few months ago.

-He goes to bed at 7, has one night nursing sometime after 4am, and wakes up around 7, sometimes later if he has a long awake period around 6am and ends up falling back asleep.

-He has 2 naps a day, each usually 30-40 minutes long (although sometimes he'll have an hour long nap). He's not on a strict schedule, and his naptimes start anywhere between 10-11am, and 2:30-3:30pm.

-He stands unassisted for far longer periods of time, far more frequently. His record is several minutes.

-He can stand up from a squatting position without holding on to anything, and can squat down slowly and gracefully from standing without holding on to anything.

-He's a much better cruiser now, and walks with his walker really well. However, on the hardwood floors he has a tendency to let it get ahead of him and ends up looking like he's charging through the house on a rampage.

-He's been hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand for 3 months.

-He's been climbing stairs for at least a couple of months, but he's really fast at it now.

-If he loses something under the couch he'll crawl over, lay on his tummy, peer under the couch, and reach for the object.

-He waves "Hi!" when we say "Say 'hi'!" He lifts his arms when we say "Up!" and understands the word "No," but doesn't always listen to it (these are several months old). These are the 3 "commands" that we can tell 100% for sure that he understands.

-He still babbles a lot and says things like Dada, Dad, dat, dis, deh, that seem like words, but I'm not sure if he is really intending them to be words. He likes to imitate singular sounds we make like fff, sss, tthh, but not really any combinations of letters.

-Just started babbling "Mamama" again after a long break. I don't think he's calling me "Mama" though.
-He's still pointing a lot to things he wants or places he wants to go.

-His new fascination is with light switches. He loves to turn lights on and off.

-He puts objects in containers and balls into the holes they're supposed to go into.

-He plays with his "talking" toys a lot more purposefully now. Instead of mashing his hands around on things in an excited way, he carefully presses specific buttons to hear specific words and noises. It's need to see him become so purposeful in this area.

-We have this framed print in our house that has the line from the hymn: "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all." Noah LOVES it, and always points to go over to it. When we start reading it to him (we point to the words as we read them) he gets this huge adorable smile on his face, and sometimes starts giggling. It's so cute!

-He started dropping toys off his high chair tray all the time shortly after he turned 9 months. He would do this occasionally before but I always ignored it. Then Daddy made a FUN GAME out of it *rolls eyes and sighs*, so I'm trying to break him of this habit.

-He loves it when I spray water in his mouth with a spray bottle. He laughs and opens his mouth for it again and again. His face is hilarious. A squinty wince, with his mouth wide open... so cute.

-He's figured out how to undo the bottom of our top-of-the-stair gate, and he gets really ticked off that he can't pull it all the way open.

-His pincer grasp is about the same as last month. Not amazing, but not bad.

-He detests the playpen (immediately starts screaming if he's put in it), and doesn't like being in his jumperoo. So basically, he's a free man all the time. Therefore, I can't shower unless he's sleeping. I can't vacuum unless he's in the sling (or my husband is home).

-Diaper changes are still a big battle, but this past month he has added a freak-out everytime we lay him on the change table. Sometimes he'll cry the entire time he's being changed. It's ridiculous, really.

-He hugs and kisses Mommy (with a wide open slobbery mouth) all the time. He's been kissing me for months, but this month he started kissing Daddy! He'll only kiss his ear, though, because Daddy's face is too scratchy:) I find that hilarious. The few times he's tried to kiss his cheek or mouth he came away with an injured, disgusted look on his face. It cracks us up!

-He is an enormous Mommy-suck. He is so attached to me I can hardly even describe it. He cannot be distracted or dissuaded if he wants his Mom, and he wants his Mom often. After seeing any display of this Mommy-suckyness, people agree that if I were going back to work when my maternity leave is technically over in 2 months, he honestly might never recover. I am the be-all and end-all in his life, and if I disappeared I honestly think he might will himself to die.

A typical day in our house at 10 months old might look like this:

7:00am - Wake up
7:30am - Nurse
9:30am - Nurse
10:15am - Sleep
11:00am - Wake up
11:30am - Nurse
1:30pm - Nurse
2:15pm - Sleep
3:00pm - Wake up
3:30 - Nurse
5:00 - Nurse
6:00 - Dinner (solids)
6:40 - Bath time
7:00 - Nurse and bedtime (plus 1 night feeding)

That's what a typical day MIGHT look like, but we are by no means on a schedule and the timing of things can be different everyday. If a nap goes long, or he wants to nurse sooner or later, or he does seem to want to sleep... everyday is different. The one basically consistent part of our day is the wake, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, dinner, bath, bedtime (with nursing). Lately Noah has been nursing to sleep for his naps more often just because that's when his feeding happens to land. And I'm not a nazi about not letting him fall asleep nursing. I try to have him fall asleep in a variety of ways throughout the week so that he has "versatility." I want him to be able to fall asleep nursing, rocking, on his own, or in the car.

Now that Noah is down to 2 short naps a day I have even less time to get things done around the house. I use his first nap to shower (I have to finish getting ready while he's awake, usually), and his second nap I use to try and relax and eat something, since I don't have time to do that during the rest of the day. I do most of my chores when Justin is home because it's way easier to clean my house without Noah strapped to my body or trying to climb my legs.

We seem to have had a month off from teething, which has been nice. And it's been nice going down to 2 naps, which we did right at 9 months, even though that usually means I have less baby-free time. It's just been a lot easier to do other things now that Noah has awake periods of at least 3 hours, and can usually stay awake (and be happy) for 4 hours or more if we're out doing something.

Noah's 10th month has been lots of fun. It's crazy watching him grow up so quickly, and I can't believe he's going to be a year old so soon! I should start thinking about his birthday party...

Noah is doing all these things that it doesn't look like he should be doing. He's tall (but skinny) for 8 months, but he still looks too small to be doing all the crazy stuff he does. For example:

-He's a speed crawler and just takes off on his own out of the living room down the hallway and goes into bedrooms and closets and bathrooms on his own.

-He is always pulling up to stand using anything he can.

-He'll pull up on the couch, turn his body, reach his hand over, grab the coffee table, and cruise over to the coffee table. He also has an extremely long reach to grab anything on top of said coffee table.

-He'll stand up by using just the wall as support - nothing to actually grab onto. Then he'll just turn around and keep one hand on the wall and check out what's going on around him.

-He crawls over to the windows and pulls himself up so he can stand there watching the world go by.

-If I'm on the couch and he's really hungry he'll pull up to stand and then list his legs and actually try and climb UP the couch. All while whining. It's hilarious.

-He'll pull up to stand just using one hand on one leg of the jumperoo. Then he just hangs out there.

-He can balance himself when he's just sitting in a squat, ass to ankles.

-About a week ago he was playing with Justin on the floor. He was standing up, squatting down, stand up, squatting down while they were playing. He was sitting in a squat, and then just pushed up with his legs and stood up without holding on to anything. He just stood up! On his own! He put his hand on Justin's leg to steady himself once he got up there, but it was crazy!

-He doesn't even need anyone spotting him as he travels throughout the house, even though we have all hardwood and ceramic floors. I mean, we need to make sure he doesn't get into anything dangerous, but he almost never falls down.

All these things are things he's been doing since no later than 7 1/2 months old. He just seems too young and small to be doing all this! I can't believe how fast he's growing up. It's so much fun, though.

I hardly ever post pictures, but I'm going to bombard you now! Here are some from when he was 7 months old.

Climbing under the coffee table: