10 Months

Almost two weeks ago, our little Liam turned 10 months old.  I always look to his little friend, Lilly, for an idea of what's coming up next, and since she just turned 13 months old I've been totally stunned by the thought that in the next few months our little guy will not only be walking, but probably talking a good bit more, as well. This month the little mister has been BUSY.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to wear out the knees in my jeans for the first time in years from all of the crawling we do together.

Speed and confidence were probably the biggest changes this month.  Liam's got a lot of horsepower when he's crawling, so he gets pretty far pretty fast.  He LOVES to explore and isn't afraid to wander off to other rooms to see what he can find.  It's been so fun watching him develop his little routines ... When he gets tired of playing in the living room he either takes off for the study (where he has a couple of shelves of books in the bookcase) to do a little reading cardboard-book-chewing, or he heads to the back door in the kitchen to converse with his best buddy, Jack.

 Liam spends at least 15 minutes over the course of the day hanging out here ... hence the impossibly dirty glass door.  Sticky fingers & little mouth prints on one side and dog drool & nose prints on the other. In the mornings, when I'm getting myself ready for the day, he sometimes plays with his little basket of toys in our room, but is much more interested in playing with our shoes or my brushes and combs, or turning the bathtub faucet on and off.  Another new activity this month has been chase and tickle.  Liam usually forgets how this game works every day, but once we get down on our hands and knees and grab him to tickle him, he remembers pretty quickly.  He loves the anticipation of waiting for us to snatch him off the floor and tickle his little sides.

 Another month has passed with no new teeth to report: he's holding firm at 6 little chompers for now.  This month he really started exploring finger foods and has gotten pretty good at getting about 75% of the food bites actually into his mouth.  He loves shredded cheese and any type of bread or crackers, as well as avocado, although that one is a little slippery and harder to feed to himself.  At Liam's 9 month appointment (which was right before he turned 10 months) he had a little toe prick blood draw to check his iron levels. Sweet Dr. Jackson said that his levels are high enough that we can start him on whole milk at 11 months ... IF he is doing a good job of eating all of his food groups.  Prior to this news I really hadn't worked too hard to get him to eat meats - he didn't really like them and it was so messy and fussy to push it.  However, saving a month's worth of formula $$ was motivation enough for me to stick with it and after testing just about every brand and type of baby food with meat, I've finally found two types that he will eat without too much protest:

Thank you, Happy Baby & Plum Organics for making baby food with meat that doesn't gag my son.  I'm so very grateful.  I also stopped making Liam's baby food this month.  He has lots of veggies left in our freezer, he's made it quite clear he isn't interested in meat that I puree, and we've just been so busy it has been much more convenient to buy tubs and pouches of fruit than to make the mess that it is to make fruit for him myself.  Also, since he's moving into the stage where he will be eating more and more of our foods with us, I didn't want to have a frozen stockpile of purees go to waste.  My blender motor is thankful I'm buying pre-made now.

I think those are the main changes we've seen between 9 & 10 months.  Our family has been busy, so not much exciting or new to report ... just happy everyday growth & learning.  Here are a few more pictures of our sweetie.

Little family pic before the neighborhood Valentine's party we hosted

Such a handsome fellow at his impromptu playground photo shoot

I know I posted this pic in my last post, but it's my new favorite.  Those eyes are too much.

The official 10 month pic

I can't believe how old he looks!

& some post photo shoot giggles!