Carter - Eleven Months

11 months….are you kidding me?!?!  I was having a hard enough time being in the double digit number of months but we are a mere one month away from having a one year old.  I may be tearing up a bit as I write this.

Diapers

Still wearing 3’s.

Shoe Size

3 1/2 wide. He only has one pair of shoes and he wears them all the time. This is why I got brown shoes. They go with everything!

Clothes

9 month tops now fit him pretty well and some are even getting snug, but those are the ones he wears frequently and have been washed and dried a ton.  He is just now starting to wear 9 month pants exclusively.  We’ve put up most of the 6 month pants.  For sleepers, he is wearing 9 months even though they’re still a little big on him.  I ordered the shirt he is wearing for his birthday party and got it in 9 months size.  My 12 month old will be wearing a 9 month shirt…and as of now, it swallows him.  More wash and dry cycles to come before it will come close to fitting.  Overall on size - he’s a small baby, has been for a year now.  The pediatrician isn’t worried about it at all and says that he’s just active.  There is no truer statement!!!

Feeding

Still rocking the homemade foods!!  He now eats a set group of fruits and veggies, I think we’re done experimenting.  The majority of the time he eats:

• Veggies:  Green Beans, Peas, Sweet Potatoes, Carrots, Broccoli, Lima Beans and Squash
• Fruits:  Pears, Apples, Bananas, Peaches, Avocados and Blueberries

This month, he also started eating various yogurts, kid chicken fingers and bites of whatever we’re eating at restaurants whenever we take him out with us.  He likes pieces of chicken quesadillas and rice from Mexican restaurants.  For a snack, he also started eating the Gerber Graduates Cheetos.  Some are just flavored with cheese and others have veggie flavors.  Now that he has seven teeth, he’s able to use them to chew things like Cheetos and we’re trying to provide as many opportunities as possible to teach him that teeth are for chewing food.  We’ve been blessed with a great eater, that’s for sure.  Don’t let his petite figure fool you….this child opens his mouth WIDE when anything comes near it.  He will eat ANYTHING.

Sleep

Still 11-12 hours at night (with a rare 13 hour night every now and again) and two naps during the day that last anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.  Rainy nights still make him sleep longer.  If I’m woken in the middle of the night by thunder and rain outside, I can guarantee that Carter will sleep in late the next morning.  Another guarantee for later sleep is the temperature.  Boo Boo may as well sleep in an igloo.  The colder it is, the longer he sleeps.  He also got sick with a cough and bad runny nose this  month and the doc told us to give him baby Zyrtec.  It has antihistamine in it so that  made him sleep super long and like a rock too.  This is certainly another area where Justin and I realize how blessed we are with Carter.  He sure loves his sleep. 

But I must be honest.  I don’t like it when people say how “lucky” we are that he sleeps that long.  I sleep trained Carter for weeks to get him to sleep like that.  I was upstairs “sleeping” in the spare bedroom because I was in and out of his room so much.  It would have been so easy to give in and feed him in the middle of the night because we both would have slept more, but I was headstrong and refused to back down.  I did everything under the sun to get him to go back to sleep except feed him.  It meant a lot of long nights for me and for him, but we did it and now we both sleep extremely well at night!!

Waketime

No changes. Outside is his favorite still.  It’s harder to play outside now that it’s so cold, but we try to work it in when we can.  Carter still loves walks around the neighborhood but I’ve been hesitant to do it since it gets dark at 4:30pm here.  We also never use the golf cart anymore which I know he misses, but it’s just too cold.  The only time we even think about using it is on the weekends in the middle of the day when the temp is at its highest.

Mother’s Day Out

Nothing interesting to note in this area.  He still goes two days a week from 9-1 and has only been sent home one time because of a fever.  The teachers dote on him frequently as does the teacher that keeps him on Sundays when Justin and I are in Sunday School.  They love him :)

Justin’s Travel

November was excellent.  Carter and I both got lots of daddy time!!  Justin’s parents traveled to Russia to visit our church’s sponsored children at an orphanage in Kirov.  While they were gone, Justin didn’t travel at all so he stayed at home with Carter for two weeks while I was working.  Justin only traveled 7 days total this month.  December is another story though.  He’ll be out of town every week in December except the week of Christmas.  We’ll be utilizing Face Time next month for sure!

Statistics

No 11 month appointment, but at 11 months, I measured him at roughly 29.5 inches (57th %) and weighed him at 20.4 lbs (24th %). Next pediatrician appointment is on his actual birthday, December 28th.

Abilities

Give the kid a walker and he’ll be gone in seconds.  He LOVES to walk around the house with his walker or by holding on to me or Justin.  He still can’t stand on his own just yet, but he experiments ALL THE TIME.  Starting at 10 1/2 months, he was constantly letting go of both hands when holding onto something to see how long he can stand there.  Right now his favorite thing to do is hold a remote with one hand while hanging onto the coffee table, or chair or dog kennel or something else with the other hand. He’ll frequently stop holding onto the furniture and put both hands on the remote.  This usually lasts up to 30 seconds or so before he falls to his booty or grabs the furniture again for assistance.  This is his way of learning that he can stand up on his own.  The ability to walk with come after he is able to stand up with no assistance.  I’m still hoping he’ll take those first steps around his first birthday, but I will by no means be upset if he doesn’t.  With a walking toddler comes all kinds of new challenges for a parent.

Another sweet sweet thing he started doing this month is trying to say the dog’s name (yes, he is trying to say the dog’s name and STILL hasn’t said mama.  Trust me, I’m FRUSTRATED).  When we put him to bed one night he chatted himself up for about 15-20 minutes before actually going to sleep as he usually does.  As Justin and I were listening to his jabber, we recognized that he was saying “Gi…Gi…Gi”.  And not “Gi” as in “Gigi”, but “Gi” as in “Gizmo”.  We were confused because he had never said G’s before that night but we didn’t think anything of it and went to bed.  The next morning, both of us went to get Carter from his room to get him ready for church.  After changing his diaper, we all came out of his room which is right at the top of the stairs.  Gizmo was at the bottom of the stairs watching us.  Carter caught the Giz in his eye and smiled really big and said “Gi…Gi….Gi”.  Justin and I looked at each other and a light bulb went off in both of our heads.  He’s trying to say Gizmo.  Sweetest thing ever.  He says it all the time now (not the full word, but just that first syllable).

He can recognize pictures really well too.  There are two pictures over his changing table from his newborn session.  One is of me and him and the other is of Justin and him.  We let Carter stand up on his changing table (holding onto us of course) and look towards us (which means he’s looking away from the pictures).  While he’s doing this, we’ll say “where’s mama” and he turns around and points to our picture.  Then we’ll say “where’s dada” and he’ll turn and point to Justin’s picture. 

As far as saying “mama” goes….OMG.  Y’all, the frustrating part is that I think that he thinks he is saying it, but it’s coming out as “nana” instead of “mama”.  Trust me, I work with him on this daily, multiple times a day in fact.  When I say “mama” he frequently comes back with “nana”.  I’m really thinking he just doesn’t get that the “m” sound and the “n” sound are different.

Teething

No new teeth this month, but he is drooling a ton and chewing on everything in sight so I’m wondering if one is coming in soon.  It hasn’t affected his mood though.  So in total, he has 7 teeth.

Discipline

Nothing new on the disciplinary front either.  He still tests our limits with some things as any kid does, but he usually backs off after we tell him “no” a few times.  I’ve been working with saying “no” to the banging of the tray on his high chair, but I think he’s just so excited to eat and that’s why he keeps doing it.  It’s the only time he really won’t listen to me when I say “no”.

Other Notable Things

Oh my oh my.  Let me just tell you the fun mom experience that I got to endure just a few days ago.   Carter took a longer second nap than usual which means that he wakes up, eats his bottle, plays a little bit, eats his solids, takes a bath then goes to bed after one more bottle.  All this happened within 2 hours.  So naturally, I was trying to spread out the feedings as much as possible to ensure he would get more food in his belly and not reject it because he was full.  So I fed him his solids and then immediately put him in the tub.  MISTAKE.

Carter pooped in the tub.  Yep.  “Stage 2 floater” as my bro-in-law calls it.  Well, in this case it would have been “floaters” plural.  The worst part was trying to keep him from grabbing the poop with his hands.  I had to get Justin to get Carter and take him to bed so that I could clean it up.  It’s one thing cleaning up poop in a diaper.  The poop is mainly on the diaper and with a quick swipe of a wipe, you can throw it away and be done.  Not so with the tub.  I had to drain the water and then pick up his poop.  And since he was sitting in it, it was nice and smashed into the bottom of the tub which meant lots of Clorox!!  I never want to do that again!  No more solids right before bath in this household.  There will always be at least a 30 minute interval to let him “poop it out” before I give a bath!

The past few days Carter has been a true mama’s boy.  He has NEVER been a mama’s boy in his life.  I think it’s because he has so many primary caregivers.  Me, Justin, Debbie and Gordon, my mom, his school teachers, etc.  He’s never been clingy because he’s used to being “passed around”.  But the past few days he’s been all about the mama.  Not even daddy can cure those tears.  Only me.  I loved it for the first day but now it’s just plain frustrating!  I can’t even wash the dishes without him on my hip!  This only popped up just a few days ago so I’m hoping it passes soon!

 Likes

Carter still likes everything I’ve put in this section in the past several months (golf cart rides, being outside, Baby Einstein, puffs and mums, etc.) so I won’t repeat all of them, but will just list the new likes or the likes that seemed the most prevalent this month:

• Having his teeth brushed. He smiles SO big when he sees that brush!
• Walking with his walker.  It would be useful for us to have an airport runway in our backyard.  Mom and Dad are SO sick of turning the walker around when he gets to the end of a room.
• Teething pacifier and other teething rings
• Eating his shoes.  He likes the rubber at the bottom for some reason.  When we go to get him out of the car, he almost always has taken his shoe off and is chewing on it.  Gross, I know.
• Walking around things like a coffee table or toy while still holding on to it
• Watching older kids move and play
• Doors.  This was a new one last month, but he still loves playing with doors.
• Peek-a-boo.  I should change this to hide-and-seek because that’s more what it’s like.  Carter will see me or Justin and then we’ll run into another room and he follows us smiling and laughing the whole time.
• Lately he has been crawling into his bouncy seat and trying to stand up in it.  Nerve racking!!
• Baby Cheetos (it’s Gerber Graduates, but Baby Cheetos is what we call them).  I used to break them up because I worried about his choking on them, but little man knows how to use those teeth now and he chews them up before swallowing them like a champ!

Dislikes

• Falling. He is experimenting more and more with walking and I can’t catch him every time he falls. But needless to say, he gets upset when he falls and bangs his head on something. Usually picking him up and walking outside cures those tears though.
• Having his diaper changed.  He use to cry a lot when we changed his diaper but then he stopped for a long time.  Now he tends to get fussy again.  He doesn’t like laying still when there’s things around he wants to play with.

Sippy Cup

Got some good advice on the sippy cup last month and we’re still trying.  We found one that he drinks relatively well out of, and trust me, we’ve tried every sippy cup we can find.   He seems to favor the Babies R’ Us brand so now we are only giving him that one in order to not confuse him.  I can usually get him to drink about an ounce and a half or so of water/apple juice mixture around dinner, but we still can’t get him to drink his formula from the sippy cup instead of the bottle.  I plan to keep trying and just see what his pediatrician says at his appointment. 

Party Planning

Carter’s first birthday party is on December 15th.  A mere 2 1/2 weeks away.  Invitations have already gone out and I already got the cake and decorations ordered and planned out.  There’s still several things I’ll have to get taken care of as we get closer to d-day but for the most part, I have his first birthday party planned.  I can’t believe it.  He’s almost one.  Where did the time go? 

**Side note - I will not be continuing the monthly posts after his first birthday.  I may do them every 3 or 4 months so that I can keep up with his growth, but doing them monthly is extremely time consuming so I plan to be done after 12 months!**