No special milestone age for this post, just wanted to jot it down, before I forgot . . .
At 9.5 months, Max
is THE master of destruction. This is not an exaggeration. It starts from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep. He is constantly on the go and into everything. At least 5 times a day he gets the pans out of the drawer beneath the oven. This morning at 7:30, he discovered the bread pans and the noise they make when you bang them on the hard wood floor. Days like these are days I'm sure Hannah loves living with us! ;)
Found the puffs in his diaper bag and proceeded to eat the entire container of them
Trying to get the cleaning solution out, even with the safety locks on the cabinets
(He has opened them a few times! That gives ya a warm fuzzy feeling!)
likes to crawl with something in his hand. Usually, it's this giraffe. What is it with kids and giraffes? Of all the animals in the Noah's Ark set, this is the one he ALWAYS goes for. Must be the long neck, which is easy to hold. We find Mr. Giraffe all over the house.
luuuuuuves music. And has from in-utero. He "sings" at Mass.
hates wearing socks and takes them off every chance he gets, including the grocery store. Yes, I am the mother whose child doesn't have socks at Meijer when it's 45 degrees outside. What can ya do?
is such an incredibly happy, good-natured baby. He is social, loves people and never has had stranger anxiety Strangers, at least once a week, "ask" to hold him and he goes willingly. Last week, we were out to dinner, when an older lady said, "I can hold him for you." LOL, like I was looking for someone to hold him! I gave him to her and he laid his head on her chest; then, talked and showed off like he was around her every day. (I can't believe people ask to hold someone's baby that they don't know. It still takes me aback when they ask. It's usually older ladies who want their "baby fix.")
is such a mooch. Anytime I'm eating something, he climbs up by me and wants some. I usually give him tastes of what I'm having and he gobbles it down. Yesterday, it was guacamole. Today it was stuffed chix. He's not picky . . .
except he hates anything with textures like real oatmeal (vs baby cereal oatmeal) and those mashed-up-in-a-jar baby meals. He actually gags eating it. Poor kid. (No, we don't torture him and give it to him anymore.) . . .
and he is allergic to eggs. We had our first experience with this at church. I gave him some scrambled eggs for breakfast. 2 hours later he puked all over me in church. 6 hours later, he was fine. I thought it was the flu. A couple weeks later, I gave him some french toast. 2 hours later, we were in Kohls. More pukes. That's when I realized it was the eggs. His body can't digest them at this point. I really hope he outgrows this!
has gotten into good routine. Thank you, Lord! I am a person who likes routine. I yearned for Max to be on some sort of schedule early on. But I chose to go with the flow, as best as I could, and try to be the mom he needed. It was a big lesson in selflessness, as I have written before. And oh boy, did I had a lot of learning to do. Now, he takes 2 naps a day, sleeps 11 hours at night and eats breakfast, lunch and dinner. He still gets up once a night to nurse. I could probably "break" him of this, but it's the only time he really nurses without distraction, so I keep getting up. It's funny (funny as in, not really funny), when I went back to work when he was 3 months old, he was sleeping from 9pm-6am straight. The first thing people would ask me was, "How is he sleeping?" (It's like how a baby sleeps shows how good of a parent you are.) I was smug. I was proud. As if I had anything to do with it! Imagine my horror when just a few weeks later, he started getting up again! Sometimes, it was every hour and a half! (I blame going back to work - haha!) When we were in the middle of those 3 months, I thought they would last forever. Sometimes, he just needed to be rocked back to sleep and Brook would get up with him. I woke up some mornings, put the toothpicks in my eyelids and went off to work. Lack of sleep makes moms (and dads, too) crazy. Things had to change, but I didn't know how. Wasn't I somehow failing as a parent b/c my baby wasn't sleeping through the night at 4 months? Even the ped told us to let him CIO. Well, that just wasn't something we were comfortable with at such a young age. I was torn. I so badly wanted to do the "right"thing. I am a do-things-by-the-book kind of person. But I didn't know what the right thing for my child was. And that's the problem with being a parent, isn't it? There's no "one size fits all" technique. It's trial and error and it drives me nuts! I remember one desperate, sleep-deprived morning, I texted a friend for advice. We were trying to break Max of the swaddle, b/c "everyone" said 5 months was too old to still be using it. Well, I didn't want to ruin him forever, so I better break him of it, I thought! She called me and pretty much said, "Girl, if the swaddle helps him sleep, USE IT!" She also said we needed to do what worked for us and ignore everyone else. That was a turning point for me. I chose to listen to what I was telling me and go with MY intuitions. (I should say "WE," as Brook was just as much a part of this as I was.) Ahh, I felt so much peace after that. When we knew he wasn't hungry, we'd let him cry for a few minutes and sometimes he'd go back to sleep. And then magically, one night, he slept 8 hours. Hallelujah! And he kept doing it! Now, those days are a distant memory, but I remember being in the middle of them and thinking they were never going to end. Thank God they did. Went off on a tangent there . . .
loves being outside and having the wind blow through his hair (what there is of it.) He literally laughs and laughs when the wind hits his face. It's awesome.
hates hats. Anytime I try to try one on him at the store, he immediately tears it off. This is going to prove interesting this summer at the beach.
