Ten Months Old

He's so much fun these days!  

I'm sure he's growing physically, but the change there isn't nearly as pronounced as the developmental changes.  He catches on to things so fast now and also is always getting into trouble.  One day he pulled open the dishwasher drawer, climbed up on top of it, stood up, started pulling out the top rack of dishes and almost lost his balance when I intervened to keep us from taking a little jaunt to the ER.

His favorite things this month are things he can’t have:  Maya’s food, toilet paper, anything in a cabinet that is off-limits, outlets, and any type of cord.  But he also loves to open and close doors and hang out in our closet playing with shoes.

He has further developed a genuine love for books.  He loves flipping through them himself and with us, and they hold his attention for quite a bit longer than anything else.  He is shockingly good at turning the pages himself.  Not only does he always go in the right direction, he knows how to use his thumb or index finger to lift up just one page at a time.  It’s pretty crazy.

He understands a lot and can do several things on cue:

-clap

-wave (oh the waving.... it's nearly constant when we're out and about!)

-shake his head no

-when we say “amen” after our nightly family prayer he clasps his hands

-tomahawk (his party trick that I mentioned in his eight months post)

-hand things to us

-full moon (joins his hands to make a circle over his head)

-dunk a ball into his toy basketball hoop

-jump in his exersaucer

-come to us when we call him (but he has selective hearing with this one)

When we play he can also follow our example, like stacking toys or putting items in a container. 

His favorite song right now is Paddy Cake.  I think there are a million different versions of this song, but the one we sing has the line, “roooooooooll the dough… rooooooooll the dough” and he can do the hand motion himself.   He also makes a sound effect with it (kind of a drawn out ahhhhhhhh).  And of course he claps during the rest of the song.  That's our party trick these days.

The big news this month is that he falls asleep on his own at night.  Let me just let that sink in for a minute.  Kolby and I are basically declaring this our biggest parenting accomplishment yet.  Right after he turned nine months old and his second tooth was in with no more imminently on the way, we committed to teaching him to fall asleep on his own.  (We have been rocking (bouncing) him to sleep thus far, and it often took a long time).  We used the method in this book.  It's a two week process where the first couple nights we soothed him to sleep by sitting at his cribside and patting his back and singing, then phased our presence out gradually every few days until we were eventually just laying him down and walking out of the room.  We stuck to it and I'm going to go ahead and say it--I'm really proud of us.  He cried pretty bad twice, and I cried once, but we persevered and boy did it pay off.  Our bedtime routine is now so fun and pleasant.  We give him a bath, I nurse him, we read one story, then walk him to his room kiss him goodnight and lay him in his crib.  He falls asleep within a couple minutes without a peep, and he sleeps until 6am the next morning.  Can I get a hallelujah?!?

Naps are a different story.  He naps fine but we haven't had any luck in getting him to fall asleep on his own.  But you can't win 'em all.  He's outrageously happy 100% of the time, he's sleeping all the way through the night, he nurses like a champ and he eats absolutely everything we feed him.  So if I have to spend 30 minutes getting him down for every nap, so be it.  I'll take that trade off.  Although he's 20 pounds now so it's no easy feat to cradle him for that long!

We started using our little high chair seat that attaches to our table, and now we sit at the dinner table and have dinner as a family every night. (Rather than eating at the bar with him in his Bumbo seat.)  He's eating a lot more variety these days and is such a great eater!  He'll try anything and loves or at least likes it all.  We usually serve him something made especially for him, like diced veggies, yogurt, shredded chicken, sliced bananas, etc. and he also has some of whatever we're having for dinner too.  He started feeding himself this month.  At first when we put food in front of him he'd just lean forward and suck it into his mouth straight from the tray like a vacuum (hilarious), but he eventually got more comfortable picking it up with his hands and putting it in his mouth.  Early on, watching him try to make the food he grabbed with his hand actually get into his mouth was kind of like watching a screen saver and waiting eagerly for the icon to hit directly in a corner.  He'd get so close but very rarely got any exactly in there!  Now he's gotten a lot better.

Things we did this month:

-celebrated all Webb family birthdays in a one night birthday extravaganza

-went to the State Fair of Texas

-lowered Beckett's crib to the lowest level

-went to our last Ranger's game of the season as a family

-Kolby took Beckett on his first (of many, I'm sure) donuts with dad date

Things Beckett loves:

-several were mentioned above^^^

-being passed back and forth (and back and forth) between people

-waving

-feeding himself

Things I love about Beckett:

-he's started this fake laugh where he scrunches his nose and kind of does a cough/laugh sound (it's sometimes a bit patronizing)

-how I know when he's headed for the dog food because I can hear him crawling a lot faster than any other time

-when we park the car and then open the back door to get him out, he lights up and kicks and squeals with delight, as if he wasn't sure he got to come in or not

-I love going into his room on my way to bed and getting him from his crib and rocking him for a few minutes in the dark. I'm guessing at some point it'll disrupt his sleep, but for now it's easy and I cherish that sweet, quiet time with him!