Eleven Months Old

We got a coupon from Toys R Us in the mail in mid-October.  It said, “Somebody Special is Turning One!”  I about died.  There’s no way my teeny tiny little baby is that old, right?!?  Yet here we are at eleven months, his first birthday just right around the corner.  I will be a mess.  I repeat:  I will be a mess.  Consider yourselves warned.

So, eleven months…

He’s still all about the books.  One of his favorite activities is pulling up on the bookshelf in his room and grabbing out all the books he can reach, then sitting in a pile of them on the floor and “reading” most of them.  He almost always reads them right-side up and flips through page by page, really focusing on the drawings.  He LOVES books.

I also made him a little activity with a container of baby wipes filled with various jar lids, and he’ll play independently with that for a while.  I’ll dump them all out and he enjoys putting them back in through the slot at the top.

Those are really the only two independent activities that hold his attention.  The rest of his play time at home is spent playing for a few seconds at a time with some of his other toys and then crawling like a maniac through the house looking for trouble.  He loves the bathroom, either unrolling toilet paper or lifting the toilet lid and reaching his hands in.  He also likes emptying the kitchen cabinets, pulling up on the trash can and trying to eat the part of the trash bag sticking out the top, and pulling on any cords he can find.  What can I say, the kid loves to test his boundaries.  This is totally fine by me because it’s a product of his outgoing and inquisitive nature, which I love that he has.  He sure keeps us on our toes, though!

One big change this month is how often I have to fish things out of his mouth.  His pincer grip and hand coordination improved a lot, which is great for feeding himself but also means he’s able to put anything small in his mouth in an instant.  His favorite is dog food, which is a bummer because Maya loves to drop small mouthfuls of food throughout the house and then come back and eat them later.  Pretty much anytime I see that he has his lips closed it’s a guarantee he has at least one dog food kernel stored in his cheek (gross).  The other day he played outside with Kolby, then he took a nap, then I nursed him, THEN I found a leaf in his mouth.  It had to have been in there for hours  Silly kid.

He also loves to pick things up off the ground (like a clump of mud, a crumb, an acorn, etc.) and hand them to whoever is nearby.  He’s tireless with this.  We don’t spend a lot of time in the yard because all he does is hand grass to us over and over again.  But it’s nice when he inevitably grabs something he isn’t supposed to have (like a phone or remote) because we can just ask for it and he’ll hand it right over. 

He finally figured out how to crawl with something in his hand.  It’s funny to watch his thought process as he tries to figure out how he can get from point A to point B and take whatever he has with him.

Also, he’s learned to give kisses!  He kisses with his mouth wide open and tongue out.  It’s pretty much the most adorable thing ever.  And totally gross if you aren’t his parents, and sometimes even if you are.  It’s funny because with all the other things we’ve taught him, he mimics exactly what we do.  Yet with kissing, we close our lips tight and make an exaggerated pucker but his version is the exact opposite.  It’s still really cute though!  He's also starting to learn how to give hugs.

He's also developed a fake laugh.  If we tickle him or act silly he'll give a real laugh, but then sometimes he'll just decide that he wants to laugh on his own and he scrunches his nose up (like the picture above) and makes a weird laugh sounds that sounds more like a cough.  It's pretty funny.

He sleeps from about 7:45pm to 6am straight.  It is glorious.  He takes two naps a day, usually 45 minutes to 2 hours long with no real pattern as to why some are short and some are long.  He's still not falling asleep on his own for naps, but like I said before, he’s so perfect other than that we just aren’t choosing to fight that battle at this point.  I could make the excuse that his personality is so high energy it’s just harder for him to wind down in the middle of the day for a nap, but really it’s just Kolby and I just giving him what he wants.  He loves when we cradle him and hold him tight, and he loves to hold onto our shirt and look at us and make sweet sounds as he settles in.  He loves bouncing to the rhythm of “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” and the sound of the songs Kolby and I have each made up for him.  That’s what he wants at nap time, and he won’t want that forever.  So we choose to just give it to him because he’s just a baby and we want to, and we’re fine with whatever consequences that creates.  And I’ll just need to remind myself of this stance in five years when I’m holding a first grader across my arms while bouncing on our fourth exercise ball (we’re already on #2 because we wore the first one out… seriously) and thinking, “I think we may have made the wrong call here.”  :)

He’s started to have moments when he becomes a real momma’s boy.  Up to this point he has eagerly gone to anyone with a friendly face, which has been really nice and it makes my heart so happy to see other people enjoy holding him.  He’s a little more hesitant now, where he’ll still go willingly but if I stick around he wants to come back to me.  I’ve also noticed for the first time this month that he seems to crave the emotional aspect of nursing.  It seems like because he’s hit this very mobile and exploratory stage in life and is go-go-go into new things, he sometimes needs to come back to me and nurse and rest and reconnect.  Then he’s off again!

We had our first sick visit to the doctor this month, for pink eye.  Thankfully it didn’t bother him one bit and cleared up within a few hours of the antibiotic eye drops.  Other than pink eye and the occasional congestion, he has not been sick whatsoever and we are so thankful for his good health!  Unfortunately he was generous enough to share his pink eye with me with no hesitation.  Kolby has it now too.  I'm a little worried that we will just pass it around to each other forever!

Things we did this month:

-I took Beckett to a pumpkin patch and he picked out his first pumpkin

-Went to the Perot museum with cousin Kyndall (and Kassidy & Derek!)

-Beckett got pink eye and shared it with all of us

-Kolby started taking Beckett on Saturday adventures. It's their special one-on-one time and sometimes they go to the donut shop for breakfast, or to the park for a food-truck lunch, etc.

-took Beckett trick-or-treating for the first time; he went as King Kong climbing the Empire State Building (Kolby)

-traveled to Waco to celebrate Baylor Homecoming with whole my family

-celebrated our church's 4th birthday, where Beckett experienced his first bounce house slide and LOVED it

Things Beckett loves:

-the kitchen trash can

-my mom was reading him Goodnight Moon and when she touched the fireplace in the book she'd pretend it burned her finger; it quickly became Beckett's favorite game to grab our finger and force us to touch the fireplace in that book and watch us react

-pulling his socks off

-learning new things

-yelling into cups to hear his voice echo

Things I love about Beckett:  

-how great of a poker face he has when he has something in his mouth

-I love nursing him now more than ever

-when he scrunches his nose up and tries to make himself laugh

-his hair is starting to get long!

-his kisses and hugs XOXOXO

 

Some outtakes: