15 mos old...

Deacon had his 15 month well-check yesterday at the pediatrician's office.  He did great, as always, charming the nurses with his sweet smile and adorable face.  :)  In fact, they were fighting over who was NOT going to give him his shots.  No one wants that job, especially for the cute ones.  :)

The nurse who "lost the bet" did a fine job, though -- very fast & efficient -- and Deacon was over it in 10 seconds or less.  And I'm sure he doesn't hold it against her.  :)

Here's what we discovered his stats are now:

Weight = 22 lbs, 10 oz (24%)

Height = 31 in (46%)

So still a little guy in comparison, but none of the docs or nurses show any concern about his diet or health.  And he's average for his height.  Jeff and I are, too, so that's not surprising.

In other news, he's pretty much eating whatever we eat for lunches and dinners.  He's somewhat picky (does that make you happy, momma? :), but I think it's more that we just have to keep trying things with him before he decides that he likes it.  He was like that with baby food, so it makes sense that he's like that with table food.  His favorite snack is Teddy Grahams, but he likes Kix cereal and Cheerios, and goldfish, too.

He's walking all over the place and has recently discovered how to get up to standing by himself, without the help of a wall or piece of furniture.  I was so proud of him the first time I saw him do that; I kinda made a big deal about it.  And still do.  :)

He is still such a chatterbox!  I'm so surprised that he's not saying words, other than mama and da (daddy), just because of how much he jibber-jabbers.  But he is starting to mimick things that we say, like "ahcky" for when he gets into the trash can (ew.) -- he says "ah", and I say, "That's right, ahcky."  He also will copy us when we say "up" for help onto the couch.  He makes the same sound.  And he's been saying "bay" for baby, when he sees himself in the mirror, or when he sees pictures of a baby.

And he's still getting so many teeth!  The boy already has 3 molars!  I haven't counted recently (cuz he knows how to use'em, too :) but I would guess he probably has 11 or 12 teeth now. 

Alright, so I don't know how this happened, but we haven't taken too many photos since Christmas.  I must've just been taking the month of January off, I don't know.  So since I don't have many of him at THIS point in time, I'll share a few from the past couple of months...

[13 mos]

[sweet scrunchy face.  14 mos]

[15 mos]

11 months...

Oh, my word.  One month to go before my baby boy turns a year old.  I can't hardly take it...

We had to lower Deacon's crib mattress at the beginning of this month -- he started to like standing up in his crib and that was just not okay with me.  He was too much in danger of leaning too far over so we dropped the mattress down a couple levels.

We continued to try new foods like broccoli & carrots with cheese, lasagna and apples w/oatmeal (all baby food) and Deacon is not too big a fan.  About a week before he turned 11 mos, we started trying to give him some table food from our dinner -- baked spaghetti, french toast w/bacon, real sweet potatoes, baked beans and peaches...he does pretty well with it all.  My fear of him choking is fading.  :\  We've also begun to introduce whole milk as my supply of breastmilk continues to wane.  As it stands right now, this is what his feeding schedule looks like:

an 8 oz bottle first thing in the morning (whole milk, breastmilk, formula or combo of the 3)

some rice cereal and yogurt for a mid-morning snack or "breakfast"

an 8 oz bottle for lunch

some goldfish, cheerios or puffs and water for snack

dinner with "the fam" (table food from whatever we're eating)

an 8 oz bottle before bed

Since we're talking about his feeding schedule, I'll just mention here that I stopped nursing Deacon at the end of this month.  I had planned to try to nurse through his 1st year and I think we probably would've made it (I had gotten down to just nursing him first thing in the morning by this month) but I went away for a weekend retreat the end of Sept/first of Oct and rather than take the pump with me just for that one feeding, I thought it was time to just be done altogether.  He did great, of course.  He's so easy-going.  :)  I had a little trouble for about 6-7 days with pain & discomfort but within about 10 days I was done with all of that.

[if I'm working on loading or unloading the dishwasher,

he's right there, with his "Dr. Seuss hair"...]

Of course, he's crawling everywhere now.  I mentioned in my last post that he'd finally begun to pull up on everything and was crawling intermittently.  Well, he's really been doing great, getting more fluid and taking less time to get where he's going.  He will crawl right up to me or Jeff where we're standing, grab a hold of our pant legs and stand right up.  It's so endearing -- I just love it!

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.  :)

9 months...

Wow, 9 months already.  3/4 of year.  *sniff*

Well, this month it was all about the food!  We finally got past the "solids strike", as I was calling it.  The turning point, I would say, came right around the middle of the month when Deacon tried squash.  Don't know what it was about the squash but he loved it and ate the whole container!

Well, after that it was on!  We revisited carrots the next night and he ate them all.  Then we tried sweet potatoes again and he ate the whole container of those.  I was a happy mama.  :)

But it didn't stop there.  Since then, we've been giving him bananas, pears, peas, mixed vegetables, green beans, apple-blueberry, peaches, apple-strawberry-banana.  With the exception of the peas and green beans, he's been eating everything all gone.  The peas and the green beans...well, I kinda don't blame him for not eating those.  :]

We had another couple of big deals happen this month -- we finally saw Deacon roll over!  Just a few days after he started eating his solids really well, I saw him roll over with my own eyes.  I know that he'd been rolling over because I would leave him laying one way and when I came back into the room, he'd be laying the opposite.  Little stinker would wait until I left the room to do his tricks.  :)  But I finally saw him do it one day and I was so excited!

[this cracks me up: he's watching Jay-Jay on Daddy's phone...]

Since then he'll roll over if he's trying to get to something or just not paying attention to what he's doing, but he's not a "roly-poly" by any means.  We do have to watch where we put him now so he doesn't roll off the couch/loveseat or bed.  And he's ALL.OVER.THE.PLACE. in his crib!  My goodness, that boy can get around in that crib, with the sides to help him push off.  You never know how he's going to end up!

Deacon also learned to clap his hands this month!  About a week after I saw him roll over he started clapping one day.  I can't even tell you how excited I was about that.  More excited than I thought I would be!  I mean, it's just clapping, for pete's sake.  But for me, I think I see it as the first step to him being able to communicate something to us.  Right now, he's not really using clapping to communicate yet because he does it at pretty random times, not necessarily when he's happy, and not always when he hears music or something.  But soon we'll be able to see his clapping as a sign of happiness or contentment or playfulness or whatever it turns into.  And THAT is exciting to me.  :)

[Deacon with his great Gram & Buppa, 9 mos]

BIG shower!

We are so overwhelmed at the outpouring of love we saw tonight at our BIG baby shower thrown by our Sunday School class -- the amount of folks that came, the amount of food that was prepared, the thought and time that so obviously went into the decorations, setup, games, etc.

We.were.floored.  To say the least.

And it was a blast!  We laughed a lot, ate a lot, cried some.  :)  It was such a blessing to us...the photos (taken by one very talented Summer Saunders) should pretty much speak for themselves:

Our sweet friend, Catherine, took 8x10 copies of some of our maternity photos and did scrapbook pages of them to set on all the tables...and those are coffee beans.  :)  Nice touch!

[the multitude of gifts]

[the absolutely gorgeous cake that our friend, Stephen, MADE...]

[34 weeks pregnant]

[*gasp* a chocolate fountain!]

This is normally the room that our Sunday School class meets in, now filled with things of the party persuasion.  It was a great venue to throw a shower in.  And hold everyone.  :)

The onesie and hat say "I was worth the wait."  :)

I had to throw in a photo of my ridiculously cute niece, Cora Beth.  Had to.  :)

[so, so very glad that my family could be there for this special night]

So many folks were involved in the planning of this shower and so much time and thought and love went into making it a success -- those girls on the "planning committee" thought of everything!  We could not have asked for anything more special than what was presented tonight.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all of those who spent any amount of time on any aspect of this shower -- you blessed our hearts so much!

Thank you to Summer Saunders who left us with these and so many more photos of these precious memories for us.

Thank you to all of those who were able to attend -- we had a wonderful time with you all!  Your love and generosity are so overwhelming to us and we're so grateful for each of you!

And thank you to our Lord Jesus who has brought each and every loved one into our lives so that we could experience the kind of love that we did tonight.  Our hearts and our lives are so full!