10 months!

This is SUCH A FUN AGE! He is growing so much!  This shirt is one of my favorites of his, and it is a 12 month shirt.  He still wears a lot of 9 month clothes, especially pants, but he does wear some 12 month stuff.  He looks like such a big boy here!

These pictures are on December 22, 2011.   Just a few days late.  On the 18th we went to church and then a TSO concert, while Noah stayed with some friends of ours.  

I CANNOT believe I have a 10 month old.  I've been really nostalgic lately because all of a sudden Noah's just not a little baby anymore and I miss it!  We had to lower his bed and pack up a bunch of baby toys!  He's trying to walk, he is fiercely independent and wants to do everything on his own, he likes to feed himself, he "reads", loves music, bathtime, making faces and mimicking whatever Adam and I do (sticking out his tongue, making faces, etc.), and he is a good sleeper again finally!  For a while it was pretty rough, but he is back to sleeping a good 12 hours at night!  I do usually feed him before I go to bed (he doesn't wake up for it though), and then he wakes up sometime in between 5 and 7 usually to eat but goes back to sleep until the 12-14 hour mark.  He usually still naps pretty well once or twice during the day as well.  He plays REALLY HARD.  He is never still except for reading books, and he is on the go all the time.  I can't wait to see how God uses his energy one day and I hope to teach him to use it for good.

I think he's gained about 2lbs since last month and he is just a totally different child!  He is learning how to play with all his toys in new ways and making all kinds of new sounds.  Still no hair, but I don't care.  People always comment about that, but I didn't have hair until I was 2, so he's probably doomed.

He is a joy to take in public most of the time.  We go out to eat and people love to come and talk to him and he loves the attention.  His Sunday school teachers and BSF leaders love him to pieces and he loves going to those places, too.  Sometimes it amazes me that strangers just come up and touch him on the cheek or head or hand or feet and it bugs me a little, but I know they just want to say hi.

I keep thinking he is going to push another tooth through, but so far we still just have the 7.  He is getting super picky about foods, and it drives me insane.  Meals are our biggest challenge, but he loves to eat--I just don't always know what it is he likes at that meal because it changes all the time!

I also frequently hear myself saying, "Son, you can't do EVERYTHING all by yourself all the time!" (He thinks he can walk on his own, eat with a spoon, eat things he can't, etc.) And then it's like, "Uh, hello?  Do you hear yourself????  It's like pot calling the kettle black."  I know! The apple doesn't fall very far.

As exhausting as it is, I love this journey!  And seriously...10 months?!?!?!?!  But I just had him yesterday, didn't I??

9.5 Months

Why is it 9.5 months instead of 9 months you ask?  This time it wasn't because I was busy or lazy, but because my poor little baby was sick on November 18th and not up for taking a picture.  It wasn't really something I wanted to document!  The poor guy got sick right at the beginning of November.  His doctor and I are on the same page usually, and like to "wait it out" and not give medication to a little guy.  But it got bad enough that we went to urgent care at our doctor's clinic after several days with no improvement.  I was hoping to get in earlier and see his actual doctor, but he was out of town.  So UC it was.  Urgent care did nothing.  Thanks.  Several days later, still no improvement and it seemed worse, so I finally made an appointment with his regular doc, who was finally back in town.  He asked me lots of questions and asked me how long Noah had symptoms (10 days) and did blood work, and then decided to prescribe antibiotics.  

My mom came up to help me out because I had not been to work in quite a while with all the sickness and I was just about at my wit's end.  Mom came up and held him and stayed up with him and let me sleep one night and go to work one day.  After about 3 days of antibiotics, he finally showed a little bit of improvement.  It took about 7-9 days total to seem pretty much back to normal.

I was starting to get worried about him, because that's what I tend to do, but he wasn't eating or gaining weight and growing.  He wasn't holding food in at either end except breastmilk and pedialyte.  He had more snot than I knew was possible.  His temp was 103.  And he was getting about 5 teeth at once.  Fun.  But finally, after he started to feel better, he grew again in leaps and bounds!

So this is on December 1, 2011.  No more nice, neat shots with the monkey and the paper.  He won't have that anymore, he is too busy!  I can hear him say, "That's for babies!" Like on the cereal commercial.  :-)

 I think Adam was holding the paper and I was trying to take a quick picture!

Hm, what can I do with the paper?  I can eat it!

 And it makes all kinds of cool noises when I crinkle it up!

 Ok, can we stop now?

After getting all better, Noah decided to be a big boy and try new foods with all his new teeth!  He LOVES cheerios!  The orange is sweet potato, which he wasn't sure about eating on his own, but he will still eat it pureed at this point.  And of course he loves to be independent and feed himself his bottle.

See how much I've grown????  I can pull up on Toby's crate!  Notice one sock on and one sock off--I can't for the life of me keep them on him!  He just pulls them off.

Mommy, are you watching?

I see the camera!

How close can I get?

I think I will pull out every toy in this box:

We didn't go in for a "well-baby" check-up at 9 months because he wasn't getting any more shots, and well, he wasn't "well."  We went to urgent care, then the regular doc, and then the regular doc 10 days later to follow up.  At that point, the doc said he was thinking about giving him a chest x-ray at the original appointment, but was glad he decided not to since he didn't need it.  Me too!  At urgent care I think he was 17 lbs. 11 oz with no clothes, then at the next one he was the same with his diaper.  Then at the next appointment he was 17 lbs. 12 oz.  Even though Noah got sick, the doc was happy to look at his blood work and see that he had an incredibly healthy immune system.  That's great!  I don't know how tall he is right now, either, but he is growing a lot!!  And ready for some new toys because all his toys are too babyish, but it's almost Christmas!!

Thanksgiving 2011

This year, we spent Thanksgiving with Adam's family in Oklahoma.  Noah has some different toys there than he has at home, including this toy that was Adam's and his older brother's:

Noah LOVES music...he always has and I hope he always does.  Here he's just playing a tune with Grandma McElhattan and he looks like a pro:

His other favorite pastime activity is reading, which I am thrilled about.  Goodnight Moon is one that is familiar to him.

Also at Grandma McElhattan's house, he has his own little rocking chair, which he enjoyed:

We did go to Arkansas after this, but apparently I didn't take any more pictures.  And I already don't really remember too much about what we did.  I do remember traveling was a little difficult during this trip, and I didn't really sleep too much.  During the Thanksgiving holiday, Noah was crawling around army-style fairly well, and just starting to pull up on things also--he pulled up on his chair a couple of times; it's just the right height!

This Thanksgiving we sure are thankful for our little man.  He brings us a lot of joy and entertainment and we thank the Lord for him each day.  We feel like we were given an incredible little treasure and are humbled that the Lord chose us to receive this gift.  We look forward to watching him grow!