Liam: Eleven Months

Likes: Eating normal food, his sippie cup, peek a boo

Dislikes: Getting changed, the car seat

Biggest Achievement of the Month: Using his sippie cup

Biggest Challenge of the Month: His health

Sleep: So this month has been on and off.  As long as he is feeling good, he sleeps great.  He normally naps around a total of 3 hours which is great if it is the afternoon nap that is the long one and if he will sleep in his crib, because then I get time to do stuff.  But he hasn't been feeling great all month. He came down with an ear infection which resulted in him needing to sleep in bed with us, which then resulted with hubby going to the couch. But that only lasted a few days and after that he went back to sleeping amazing.  The only other hitch was daylight savings time which did result in his bedtime becoming a bit earlier but he does wake up a bit earlier too so it is a good and a bad thing.  And last night he slept horribly and screamed for over an hour with hubby but I think that was just a fluke. 

Temperment/Personality: I am pretty sure that he is going to be a big ham.  He sees us smiling from something he did and so he does it again with a huge smile on his face. He is so happy but he also can turn on a dime if he doesn't get what he wants or if he sees you eating and you are not sharing. He loves seeing the people he knows and is starting to warm up to others more easily. He is interested in everything around and is understanding so much more of what we are saying.

Eating: He eats a ton. Still breastfeeding but he is eating parts of what we have for dinner and other meals if he is with us. If we go out, he gets some of what we are having or else he starts to freak out. We have still been giving him purees because we want to make sure he is eating enough but I am not sure those are enough.  On Sunday mornings he gets 2 purees, some boobie and then goes on to have eggs and whatever else we give him at breakfast. One lunch with my mom he had a yogurt, some eggs and then a fat piece of toast. I hoping to start just doing normal food because more of what he eats seems to be ending up in his mouth rather then on the floor.

I noticed after he drank over half of my roommate's smoothie that he can drink out of a straw. So I figured I would try a straw type sippie cup.  I got one and after a few days he loved it. He holds it on his own and he doesn't have to understand gravity to use it. Although he still is horrible at drinking and tends to drool it all over himself, it is not because of the cup.

The Superficial: Still small. compared to lots of other kids around his age he is tiny but he does fit into the 9-12 month clothes so he must be somewhere in the correct range. He is over 19 lbs now, almost 20 (he had to go to the doctor and they weighed him). He is still adorable although he did get a rash all over his body but after we took him to the doctor they said it would go away in a few days and it did.

Milestones & Firsts: So he can stand we have figured out, he just chooses not to, so I am sure in the next month or so he will get around to doing that. He is definitely saying mama to me now (he will say it when I walk away or when he is coming to me) so that makes it better that he said dada first.  I think he might be starting to do that with dada too but I am not 100% yet. He is waving a little bit and did it unprompted for the first time when leaving his great grandparent's house to great grandpa.  

He also started clapping.  The first time he did it, I just looked at him and asked who taught him that because I know I don't clap with him (it was his dad and our roommate) but it is adorable.  He also has started doing the raspberry noise which is fun.  I love that he is doing all these things that he sees other people do and that I don't teach him.

So he had a few firsts this month.  He got to go to his first Renaissance Faire with me and a friend and had a blast. I was shocked how well he did, I had him in his stroller almost the entire time and as long as he had his 6 items with him in it, he was happy.  And when I had to pull him out to eat in a crowded room, he sat on my lap just fine.

He had his first ear infection which wasn't fun.  We had noticed he was cranky and wasn't sleeping well and then on a Saturday I was told by my roommate that babysat him that he had a fever all morning.  I later saw him yanking at his ears later and then it clicked. We brought him into Instacare and sure enough he had an ear infection.  They said we seemed to catch it really fast and they gave us medicine and it went right away. He really only had a few bad days and the fever for only a day and a half but I still felt so bad for him.

He also had his first Halloween.  We had originally planned to stop by my parents house so they could see him in his costume and "trick or treat" at their house but once we got there, we were told by my dad that my mom was at an art meeting and wouldn't be home for awhile.  After that we were supposed to go trick or treating with my sister in law and her daughter but she ended up having to work so we didn't do that either, but it ended up being a good thing because he hated his puppy costume and only wore it for about a total of 30 minutes.  Instead we got some fast food, ice cream and went home and watched Hocus Pocus so it turned out  to be fun.