Noah at Ten (Almost Eleven) Months

I've been meaning to write another Noah post for, well, at least a month now. I guess I'll just bunch 9, 10 and, let's be honest, 11 months all together. I am currently multi-tasking: Blogging and sleep training. Again. Despite our previous successful sleep training attempts, Noah remains a horrible sleeper. I think it's just how he is. He did well for about a week, then got sick and it all went out the window again. So here I sit, in a recliner in his room, while he stands and yells at me from his crib. Not pleasant, but completely necessary, as he was up 5 times last night over 12 hours, which sadly was a completely typical night for him. It's like having a newborn, except in an almost one year old. I can't believe we've been doing this for almost a year. I won't think too much about that. At least we've done it enough times to know that the sleep training works, it just sucks big time while we're doing it.

Aside from the nighttime adventures, Noah continues to grow and develop perfectly. At about nine and a half months, he finally figured out how to crawl. I'm not sure what took him so long, but he is mighty quick on his hands and knees these days, and has even developed different methods for crawling depending on what he's wearing. He has a pretty rocking bear crawl when he's wearing shorts and doesn't want his knees on the ground. Noah loves to crawl around in the grass outside and doesn't even care about having his skin touch the grass (Nate HATED that). Noah is moving slowly towards walking; he can stand on his own for quite a while, but hasn't tried to take any steps yet.

Noah says a couple of words very well these days--The first was "Mama," then "cat," then "truck." We drove down to Chicago last Saturday to go to the Shedd Aquarium and Noah spent a good part of the time that he was awake yelling, "Tuck! Tuck!," as he watched the semis out his window. He says cat and truck on command, but is more picky about Mama. Noah knows how to "Give me five," and grins with each hand slap. He has also started giving kisses in the last couple of weeks. If we say, "Noah, do you have some kisses for Mommy?," he smacks he lips against his tongue to make a kissing sound. When I was nursing him before bed this evening, he popped off a few times to give me kisses, smiling sleepily as I thanked him. He seems to understand that kisses are endearing and gives them at sweet moments, in addition to when we ask him for some kisses. Noah loves to wave hello and goodbye. He waves at all the other parents when we're picking Nate and Abbie up from school. He does this coy little smile, too, where he turns his head to the side and looks out the corner of his eye while he's smiling at people he doesn't know. It's just unbelievably adorable. Noah knows how to clap, but is much more reserved with his clapping than with his waving. He signs "more," though not every time he wants more of something--He still reserves yelling as choice number one for that. Noah likes to do the hand motions for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" with us. He has been doing that for a couple of months now--I'm still trying to get it on video, but somehow he seems to know every time I turn the camera on.

Noah continues to love food. His favorites are still made up of any and all fruits, but he has finally started eating a wider variety of foods. The only baby food that he'll eat is fruit, but he'll eat just about anything as long as it's not pureed. He loves Cheerios and Mozzarella cheese, spaghetti and tomato soup. He also really loves any type of bread that he can get his hands on. He's a very good finger food eater these days; I'm trying to figure out when and how to stop the purees/switch to just feeding him what we're eating. He's not at all able to feed himself with a spoon--I can't remember when he's supposed to be able to do that? Noah is still breastfeeding and still loving it. He nurses when he first wakes up in the morning, before his morning nap, before his afternoon nap, around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon and before bed. Then he sometimes nurses when he wakes up from his naps or when he's cranky, etc. I really do enjoy nursing this boy. He has only bitten me a couple of times and being the toothless wonder that he still is, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I don't anticipate weaning him anytime soon--Nate weaned at about 12 months and Abbie was about 16 months old. I love the time that nursing gives us to snuggle and the time that it gives me to just sit during the day, so I'll most likely leave weaning up to Noah. It's just too sweet a time to give up yet.

Here are some pictures from the last couple of months:

We call this his walrus tusks. He'll sometimes play for 5 minutes with this thing just hanging out of his mouth.

He loves to watch Nate and Abbie playing outside. He tends to get pretty indecent with with the window and his tongue.

Watching the kids outside

He alternates sucking on his top and bottom lips for a good portion of the day. Sometimes he sucks on both of them at the same time which looks pretty funny.

"Oh, you know, just hanging out in my toy basket."

He loves to yell into cups. I think it sounds funny to him. 

Pretty sure he got the curls. Phew!

Why play with toys when there are flashlights in the world?

See the curl behind his ear?

Why play with toys when there are bottles of Diet Coke in the world?

He wasn't quite sure what to make of all this stuff when Nate and Abbie were home on spring break.

Thinking about walking

We're still not sure what color eyes he's going to have. They're definitely dark, but not really brown. They're sort of a dark greyish green right now.

This is the life.

This stuff looks super fun!

Before he got really good at pulling himself to standing, he would end up sliding his legs underneath this cart and getting stuck.

Somewhere else to stand (and find stuff I'm not supposed to have).

That laundry basket and DVD case bought me 15 uninterrupted minutes of time to myself. (Noah is not really good at playing alone. At all. In fact, that 15 minutes was basically miraculous.)

Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that's not a toy either. This kid is unbelievably talented when it comes to finding things that he's not supposed to have.

I made Nate learn to change diapers. This was the first poopy one I made him change. Poor Nate.

Yup. Pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Yup. Still the cutest.

This is how wide he opens his mouth for EVERY SINGLE BITE. I'm not sure why he thinks it has to open that big, but he seems to unhinge his jaw like a snake every time he sees the spoon coming.

Noah's favorite cabinet.