10 months!

Our computer has been having issues the past couple of weeks (hence the lack of blogs and tardiness of this post) but my type A personality is stressing that Carter's almost 10 months and a week and I haven't written his 10 month post. So, friends, this post is sans pictures as I'm on the old computer and can't upload photos, but I will get my blog updated so I can remember what our little guy is doing these days.

On Wednesday at the pulmonologist (more on that to come...) he was 20 lbs 1 ounce with a very full diaper :). Size 3 diapers (switched to pampers cruisers) and mostly 12 month clothes, although 9 month shorts fit and 12 month pants are correct length but fall off his skinny waistline.

EAT:
Eats a bottle when he wakes up in the morning (7 oz), wakes up from afternoon nap (~3, 6 oz) and bedtime (5 oz). Eats breakfast, lunch, dinner, morning snack, and sometimes afternoon snack depending on how long his afternoon nap is. Breakfast is typically baby oatmeal, fruit, and sometimes yogurt. Lunch is veggies, diced fruit, cheese, and sometimes yogurt or applesauce. Dinner is typically shredded meat, veggies, rice cereal (the iron in this stuff is amazing, so that's why I still make sure he gets baby oatmeal and cereal) and sometimes yogurt or applesauce. I say sometimes yogurt as it's his absolute favorite but I only try to give him to him every other day or so! Snacks are puffs, kale/broccoli/cheese chips (he LOVES them!), cheese, diced fruit/veggies, and cheerios. Really, I try to give him whatever we eat, just dice or mash it up. At MDO they like me to send him all finger foods,but at home he typically gets atleast 1 food where I feed him with a spoon. His favorites right now are pretty much all fruits (but for some reason is not liking strawberries the past week or so?), cheese, diced carrots, sweet potato, yogurt, and applesauce. I've also started giving him those organic pouches of purees when we're out and about and for some reason he LOVES those--not sure if it's the pouch? I also keep a handful of stage 3 jars on hand so if I don't have anything handy (or we're eating out/eating something not Carter health-worthy!), he'll eat a jar and tends to love those as well. All bottles now, completely weaned himself from nursing but I'm still pumping so he's getting breastmilk. 2 more months until whole milk :).

PLAY:
The boy is EVERYWHERE. Crawling everywhere. Pulling up on everything. Cruising all furniture. Grabbing for anything, whether it's within reach or not. Lately he's been amazing us by getting the camera from the video monitor--we think it's completely out of reach but his persistence finds a way to get it. The other day Caleb went up to check on him because the monitor had no signal....hmm, interesting, Carter had 1) unplugged it from the wall 2) disconnected the power cord from the camera, and 3) had ~3 feet of power cord IN his crib while chewing on the camera. Nice, son. Well played. So after that experience the camera goes nowhere near the bed! It amazes me how aware he is of his surroundings....and if there's anything new around (ie: paper clip on the coffee table, friends phone on the table, ironing board out, etc) he discovers it immediately. He's definitely taken the activity to a new level and it's oh so fun but oh so tiring. The boy wears me out. The days of folding laundry while he happily sits and plays with toys are over :). However, he does enjoy playing by himself as long as I'm within sight....I just can't really be doing anything (ie: fold clothes, be on computer, etc) or he will dart to get at whatever I'm doing! He's very verbal these days, almost always "talking" but not a whole lot of new phonemes emerging. Mostly everything is /dadadada/ and vowels. He did start producing /n/ in the last week, sounds more like /nana/ than /naenae/ (again this is my own personal record so I can understand my phonetics!) but he only makes /n/ when he's upset. He's a very tough little dude, we've had many bruises and scrapes and typically he'll look at you to see if you respond...if you don't or just smile and say "kaboom" he'll smile back and think nothing of it. However, if you run to coddle him, he will cry. Haha, smart guy.  We're working on body parts, specifically "head". I don't think he knows it but it's coincidence that this month he keeps using his fist and banging on his head....not sure what that's about? We're also working on signing "eat", "more" and "all done"--he's inconsistently using "eat", not using the others. We're working on waving bye and clapping...again, those skills are not quite there yet :). We have the convertible car seats, plan to switch him into those within the week! He goes to MDO on Tuesdays and Thursdays and created his first pieces of art this month--yellow chunky crayon "starry night" and a ghost footprint this last week. He does not cry when I drop him off at MDO or the nursery and really seems to enjoy the interaction with other kids (or tons of new toys to chew on...). He still enjoys stoller rides and Carter and I ran our first 10K together a few weeks ago...hopefully first of many races!

SLEEP:
Our lovely friend asthma came and visited us again this month so the cough has affected his sleep somewhat. Otherwise, he's staying pretty consistent sleeping from 7:30-6:30 and then napping from 8-9 and 12:30-2:30 or 3. Naps are still hit or miss on both fronts, but I now kind of like it that way--it gives us a little more flexibility with our day as long as he gets 1 good nap in per day.

HEALTH:
On Saturday 9/24 (I realized I need this documented so I can look back and compare...) Carter woke up with the cough and wheezing we've learned so much about the past few months. Weather is changing and he's being exposed to a lot more germs with MDO so it was no surprise. He's been on flovent daily since August but we started back up the albuterol breathing treatments. I got my first nasty comment from a Mom (it's weird how fast defenses come up when someone gives you a hard time about your kid!) but pushed through it, feeling confident that we were just dealing with his asthma as he had not other symptoms and was acting happy as a lark. This past Wednesday I ended up taking him to the pulmonologist as his cough and wheezing was no better and they ended up putting him on another course of oral steroids (prednisolone) for 5 days and he's doing MUCH better! They also added another nebulizer med prn so right now the poor guy is on 4 meds 2x/day. Oh well, hopefully we're strengthening those lungs and he'll grow out of it and run marathons like his daddy someday! BTW, it was just asthma, my instincts were right :). They checked him out for ear infections, URI, etc...nope! All clear!

Caleb and I were talking the other day about how we knew we would love Carter but really didn't know how much we could love him. He brings us so much joy! We love you to the moon and back Carter boy! Happy 10 months!