10 months...

Here we are, another month milestone.  Can't believe my little guy is 10 months old already!  This year is flying by too, too fast!

I have a feeling that won't be the last time I say that.

We had another big month with the foods.  We are trying pretty much anything we can get our hands on.  He's in the 3rd Foods stage (by Gerber) -- jars that hold a little more quantity.  Some new things we tried this month:

a banana fruit medley

apricot

pear & mango

We also tried giving him some meat for the first time toward the end of the month.  He's not a fan of the chicken noodle dinner.  It's fairly chunkier than he's used to and has lots of herbs in it.  We've tried it several times and so far he's not coming around.  He IS still eating a lot of the same veggies he's been eating: sweet potatoes, squash, mixed veggies, etc.

We also gave him "puffs" for the first time this month.  You may or may not be familiar with this little crunchy concept that dissolves fairly quickly when the baby puts them in his mouth.  It's a good way to get them used to that kind of texture in their mouth, and it also helps them practice their motor skills with their fingers.  You can do the same thing with Cheerios (surprisingly, they dissolve fairly quickly, too), and we did.  But we have more flavors in the puffs, so we do both.

He did pretty good.  It took some practice because to begin with, he would get it to the back of his tongue and then start to gag a little bit, not quite sure what to do with it (swallow or spit it out).  But practice makes perfect, they say, so we're doing that throughout the day, here and there.  And he's getting better.  At picking them up, and at eating them.  :)

We also tried giving him baby yogurt for the first time this month.  He likes that stuff!  Our grocery store carries the Yo-Baby brand and we've tried the peach and the blueberry flavors of those.  He likes both.  Jeff also picked up a bulk pack of baby yogurt at Sam's (may have been Gerber brand) that has peach, banana and strawberry flavors, and Deacon likes all of those, too.  We've started substituting his morning meal at 10am, which used to be breastmilk, with a couple tbsp of rice cereal mixed with water and the yogurt.  We've been doing that for about the last 3 weeks now and it's working for us.  It's like giving him breakfast so we're working toward that transition to 3 meals a day.

I'll be honest with you, though: when it comes to changing his schedule in some way, or adding something new in, it's hard on me.  I don't know if any of the other mamas go through that, but it's tough for me.  I get pretty used to the schedule as it is and then the next "stage" just throws me for a loop!   Such a learning experience for both (all) of us...

One other thing we've done this month in the meal department is tried giving Deacon a sippy cup for the first time.  We have a sippy cup with a soft, silicone spout and we're just giving him water in it for now.  He seems to be doing okay with it.  We offer it at random times during the day, mainly when he's eating his "breakfast" (the cereal and yogurt) and when he's having a snack (the puffs or Cheerios).  He does drink a little bit of the water and then sometimes he plays with the cup.  We have cups that don't have handles on the sides, but I think I'd like to get one that does have handles and see how he does with it.

Most everyone reading this will be aware of the hurricane we had blow through here last week, the first hurricane of this season, Irene.  Well, that was Deacon's first hurricane!  Of course, nothing was different for him.  We stayed here and just prepared ourselves for what could come.  He had no trouble sleeping through the wind and rain that Friday night/Saturday morning that the storm came ashore.  Our work offices closed around noon that Friday so we just spent the day hanging out, taking (and uploading) cell phone photos of the storm around our house, waiting for and wondering if our power would go out.  It never did.  In fact, we fared really well through the storm as compared to other areas around us.  Praise the Lord for that.

This was pretty much the extent of our "hurricane party":

Deacon does have a couple more tricks but I'll be posting about those in a separate post soon.  I've written enough in this post about my sweet boy, right?  :)  You know I could just go on and on...

We did weigh Deacon at the end of this month and he is now 19.5 lbs.  Up 3 lbs in 4 months.  I was kinda thinking that he would weigh more than that by now.  He seems like a little chunk to me but then when I see him up against other kids his age, he's on the small side. 

Regardless of his weight, height, head circumference, or whatever else they want to measure, he's my perfect little doodle.  :)

5 months...

Good gracious, another month of this boy's life has gone by!  We had kind of an exciting month, experiencing several "firsts", but mostly, we just take one day at a time and see what life brings us.  We're still "wingin' it" in this thing called parenting, doing the best we can with what we know and learn.  :)

We still try to make sure he gets tummy time, for the brief moment that he'll lay on his tummy.  He's still not a big fan but every once in a while you can catch him in a good mood where he'll lay there for a little while before he gets frustrated.  He's still not rolling over yet but we've caught him rolling on to his side a time or two.

[18 weeks]

And when he gets frustrated, we just flip over onto our back and chill for a bit.  :)

At the beginning of March, Deacon started sleeping through the night!  It was a gradual process, though, and you can read about that here.  Now, he's most definitely sleeping through the night without waking at all.  If he does, it's only for a second or two and he puts himself back to sleep.  I can't tell you how nice it is to know that when we put him down for the night, he's down until the morning.

Deacon got his first TOOTH at 4.5 months old!  You can read more about that here, but I'll just go ahead and tell you, he's cut his SECOND tooth already!  Yep, it popped out this past Monday.  He had a little fever with this one and a little more chewing & fussing, but he trudged through and got it done.  Such a trooper.  I hope we'll have a few months before the next ones start showing up...

[first tooth @ 4.5 mos]

We finally got some warmer weather so I was dressing Deacon in just onesies...

[20.5 weeks]

[love his chunky little legs!]

Around 21 weeks, I started putting size 2 diapers on Deacon overnight and after his morning feeding to try to avoid some of the messes (aka "blowouts") he was making in his clothes.  That seems to be working pretty well and I don't think it will be long before he's officially wearing size 2 diapers all the time. 

Deacon also found his feet this month.  :)  This is what we ocassionally catch him rolling on his side for:

[just relaxin', watching TV]

At 21 weeks, Deacon started sitting in a bumbo seat!  Have you heard of these?  We had and several of our friends told us we "had" to have one -- those things are expensive, though!  But Daddy ordered one for his boy and we promptly put him in it.  He seems to like it pretty well...

[21 weeks]

On the night that Deacon turned 5 months, we tried giving him rice cereal for the first time.  The box said we could mix it in his bottle or spoon-feed him.  So we mixed up what we'd normally put in his bottle (so it was very watery) and tried giving it to him in a spoon, just to see what he'd do...

Needless to say, it was kind of a bust.  But we were pleased with how he did with the spoon, having never had one of those in his mouth before.  He figured out what was happening pretty early on and would open his mouth when I held the spoon up to him.  But as I said, it was pretty watery, so he wasn't getting much.  We chalked it up to experience and got his bottle ready.

We gave him 6.5 oz (instead of the standard 4 oz) w/a tbsp of rice cereal mixed in.  He drank it down with no trouble and slept great that night.  The next night we mixed in 2 tbsp of rice cereal in the 6.5 oz bottle.  He did great with that, too, so that's kind of become the standard.  He gets a 6.5-7 oz bottle with a couple tbsp of rice cereal in it at night and he's good to go until morning.  :)  So proud of him for how he's handling all these changes as he grows up.

[5 mos]