Today you turned 10 months old and you weigh 26lbs 13oz and are 30.5 inches long...
So either your shrinking since your 9 month newsletter where I reported you were 32 inches long, or I can't work a tape measure right.
And I would like to just take a moment to pat myself on my back for posting your monthly newsletter ON TIME. This is HUGE. I will be proud of this for DAYS.
This month we started off with a little Halloween activity which was probably way more entertaining for me than it was for you come to think of it. We spent the morning at Suzanne and Sylvia's house where we ate one of the tastiest potluck brunches I've had in a long time and stuffed you kids into hilarious costumes. You were a plush little turtle. This would be the part where it was probably more fun for me. You seemed pretty neutral about the whole thing, only swapping neutrality for confusion when we lined all of you up on the couch and then started simultaneously making cooing, buzzing, and clicking noises to get you all to smile and look at the camera together. Not as challenging as herding cats, but not easy either. In fact, combing through our collective pictures from all four cameras I don't think we got a single picture with all of you smiling.We spent the rest of the afternoon running errands at which point (much to your relief) I changed you into your second costume for the day which was a simple skeleton PJ set courtesy of Grandma Carola. By night time we were home and ready to greet trick'or'treaters - something I was skeptical we would have given our track record of only one last year, and that
was the neighbor we're friends with so it was more out of pity than anything else. But this year we had over 10! I'm convinced it's because the new neighbors have fixed up crazy old lady Rena's house quite nicely since buying it. And by 'nicely' I mean 'nicely, considering they chose to paint it a god awful shade of orange and I'm still upset about it 3 months after they did it.' My theory is that the house was downright scary looking before, and on a such small cul-de-sac not many people felt compelled to wander around knocking on doors near a freaky dark house where a crazy old lady is rumored to live. But she's gone and so the treak'or'treating ensued with much merriment.Once Halloween wrapped up you came down with a cold.
Yes, sick again.
Thankfully you are the best sport about being sick, otherwise I think I'd go insane with all the times that you and I have collectively been ill this year. This time you had a head cold complete with cough, sore throat, and running nose. Which you graciously gave to me, and then I in turn gave to your dad. So for about 2 weeks running we were all in variously states of cranky. And in the midst of it all you decided to stop eating anything solid at all - even your cheerios - which drove me nearly batty by the 2nd week. You finally started eating cheerios again, but just about all other solids are out. I can sometimes tr
ick you into trying a few things, and if I'm lucky and give you a loaded spoon you might actually get some of it in your mouth. At this point I think you're just still not that into food yet, combined with getting over a cold, as well as striking out with some independence of your own.Once again I have chosen to walk the path of patience and neutrality. We try eating every day, at a few different times, and one day I'm sure I will look back on all this and yearn for the days when I didn't have to only shop at Costco, and I could leave there for less than $800 in groceries.
As for the end of the month you have been mastering a few accomplishments which has been both exciting and amusing. You've become quite adept at rolling around which has made things a little bit easier ironically. Now that you're independently mobile I don't have to hover quite as much in case you become bored and need flipping or propping up. You're quite happy to roll around and play on your own while I sit nearby supervising as well as accomplishing a task like sewing, knitting, reading, emailing, twiddling my thumbs. But mostly I enjoy getting down on the ground and playing with you - your favorite game is knocking down towers that I build with your blocks, followed by tearing apart whatever clean up your anal retentive mother has tried to do in the wake of your playing mess.
Now that you've mastered rolling around you seem to be working on pulling yourself up. You're not quite there yet, but you're getting stronger every day and I anticipate that one of these days you'll pop right up like you've been doing it for months. If I help pull you into a standing postion
and give you something to prop yourself on you actually hold yourself up quite well. So well in fact that you cruised a little the other day. Your dad and I suspect that you might bypass crawling altogether and go straight to walking. Crawling seems to interest you very little. You can get into a crawl pose complete with your belly off the ground, but do you actually crawl? No. If you want something you roll to it. Game over.We ended the month with adding a couple new constenants to your vocabulary: B and D. Which was quite entertaining as one afternoon you started saying "bah bah bah" and "dah dah dah" out of no where and continued to alternate between the two all day long. It was hilarious until about midnight when you woke up chatting. And it become increasingly unhilarious at 1:18am, 2:24am, 3:53am, 6:12am, and finally 7:42am. My sweet little boy - let me give you a tip - when you learn a new trick feel free to practice it whenever you like, just heed the following rules: 1) if you must do it at night, please wait until you have your own room and 2) if you're waking up to practice, please see to it that you go back to sleep on your own when done.
All the love and kisses possible,
Mama
