11 months...1st birthday just around the corner!

It's hard to believe, but in less than 30 days my little baby will celebrate his first birthday.  He's beginning to look less like a baby and more like a toddler, especially in pictures.  Here's his 11 month picture.  It was with our video camera, so the quality's not the best, but you can see how big he's getting:

For comparison, here's his 1-month picture:

Compare where his head and feet are in the two pictures!  He looked so little in that carseat as a newborn, now less than a year later he's just about outgrown it.  In fact, in my car I've already been using the convertible seat for a month or so.  But Kevin prefers the infant seat, so we'll keep using that in his car for as long as we can.

New developments

A few weeks ago we got him the Fisher-Price Stride-to-Ride Dino push toy.  He seemed hesitant about it at first but recently learned how to stand up and walk while pushing it.  He's got a similar push toy he plays with during the day at Grandma's. 

Here he is pushing his dino:

This is obviously an encouraging step on the road to walking but it's hard to predict when he'll take those first independent steps.  Could be tomorrow, could be another week, could be another month.  I'm still predicting that he'll be walking by his birthday but we'll see.

He still babbles a lot and has been making the "mama" noise more.  I still don't think he's referring to me when he says it but it's music to my ears nevertheless.  The first word might be coming soon, it'll be fun to see what he has to say.

Eating

Daniel's appetite for solid food has really increased a lot in the past few weeks.  He seems to enjoy just about everything, even foods you wouldn't consider "baby foods" like fish, kale, and shiitake mushrooms.  Blueberries and "orange stuff" like sweet potatoes and carrots are probably the favorites, and Puffs snacks are a big hit in our house too.  These days we generally eat meals together as a family.  Daniel either gets bite-sized pieces of what we're eating or some variation on it.  It's great that he can self-feed now so we can all eat at the same time instead of having to eat in shifts with one of us eating while the other feeds Daniel.  It's a little messy, but he does a pretty good job.

He has learned an unfortunate new trick in the past few days though.  The other night I was feeding him by myself and I put some cut-up pears and cauliflower on his tray, then went back to cutting up more.  I looked up and saw that most of the pieces I'd put on his tray were gone so I thought, "wow, he's really eating well!"  Then I happened to catch him dropping a piece on the floor and looked down to see a pile of dropped pieces on the floor!  He started to do it again so I gave him a stern face and said "no,no!"  He looked me in the eye, smiled, and proceeded to drop it anyway.  Really, defiance already?  I thought I had a little more time before we got there...

In other dining news, he's still as enthusiastic a nurser as he's ever been.  In fact, when we sit down on the couch to nurse he'll sometimes crawl over and try to start before I even get settled!  He drinks all the milk I send for him during the day and apparently wants more sometimes.

I set out with the goal of breastfeeding for at least a year and we're definitely on track to make it.  I don't plan to pump much past the 12 month mark, assuming Daniel takes to cow's milk, but I'll continue to nurse him morning and night and on weekends for as long as he wants to.  Maybe the day will come that I'm ready for that chapter in our relationship to close, but right now I still enjoy it and cherish those moments with him.  I'm certainly doing it for him, but I get as much out of it as he does.

Sleeping

Not a ton to report here.  He still sleeps well at night and naps quite well in the morning but less reliably in the afternoon.  Any given day he's fine with just the one nap, but

missing the PM nap on a regular basis makes him cranky and overtired in the evening.  So, to try to preserve that nap, we're trying the "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" approach of limiting the length of the morning nap and moving his bedtime earlier at night.  So far we've had mixed results, but one day he slept 11.5 hours at night, napped 90 minutes in the morning, and napped 2+ hours in the afternoon.  Then again, today he wouldn't nap in the morning but took a 3 hour afternoon nap.  Maybe we're moving toward just a mid-day nap.  I guess we'll know more in a few weeks once we see what's working and what's not.

Coming attractions

This next month will be a big one for us.  First, we have our first vacation as a family of 3, a 4-day trip to South Padre Island with our good friends Marko and Nicole and their son Alejandro.  Padre was an annual trip for my family when I was growing up and I hope it'll become a tradition for us too.  It's the comfort food of vacations.  It's not exotic and it won't likely be the trip of a lifetime, but it's as relaxing and comfortable as eating ice cream straight from the tub while lying on the couch in sweats.  There's no ambitious agenda of sights to see or things to do, which makes it perfect with babies.  We'll just get up, eat in the condo, go down to the water, nap, go out for lunch, then repeat in the afternoon.  In the evenings after the boys fall asleep the adults can enjoy sitting out on the balcony looking out at the waves, refreshing drink in hand.  It'll be a great trip and I've been looking forward to taking Daniel since before he was even born.

Then, in a few weeks we'll celebrate his first birthday with a swim party for his little friends.  We're hosting a joint birthday party along with our friends Charlotte and Alden, whose son Justin turns 3 a week after Daniel turns 1.  We have a lot of mutual friends, so we thought, why not combine forces to host one big party?  It should be a great time and we're looking forward to it.  We'll also have a small dinner party that night so Daniel can celebrate his birthday with his grandparents, godparents, and aunt and uncle.

We have two big milestones just around the corner, walking and first words.  Wonder if either one will come this month?