Carter: 11 Months

Eleven months have arrived! Each day brings us closer to one year with C, and makes me wish we could just make time stop for a while. Our little guy has stayed true to form this month giving us daily face-splitting smiles and baby belly laughs. If T so much as looks at C, that's all it takes for the belly laughing to start. I have no idea why C thinks T is so funny since I'm certainly not over here belly laughing, but I figure he must think he's funny looking!

 11 MONTH FAVORITES 

Wheels

Clapping

Standing

Trust falls

Scratching

Panting in excitement

Swimming

Outside

Empty water bottles

Snuggling with mom

Peek-A-Boo
Pulling on the fan cord
Cardboard boxes

11 MONTH LEAST FAVORITES

Being sick

MEMORIES & MILESTONES 

The day after turning 10 months, C woke up all bent out of shape, fussy, and with a low-grade fever. T brought his tools home from work to check him out, and as it turns out, he had an ear infection. Of course since he has so much wax in his ears, T could only see inside one of them, but one was enough as it was immediately obvious what was going on. A quick call to the hospital to send a script to the pharmacy for amoxicillin, and T, after just getting home about 10 minutes earlier, was back out the door to Walgreens in Spencer since all of our local pharmacies were already closed for the evening. The ear infection battle lasted all week before C started to feel better. Unfortunately, about six days into the ten day amoxicillin regimen, C had an allergic reaction to it, and broke out in a terrible rash all over his body. Luckily, the ear infection was gone by this point, and after discontinuing the medicine, his rash cleared up. We will have to try something else next time he's sick!



Celebrating Grandma J's birthday! C's favorite part was playing with the crinkly wrapping of course.

  

C made the official transition to his own room this month. WooHoo! He had been sleeping in his room during naps for several months already, but the temps were dipping too low for comfort for overnight sleep without a blanket during the colder months (SIDS prevention says nothing in the crib until one year). We don't currently heat the room beneath his during the colder months since it's just used for storage. Anyways, he has been sleeping through the night no problem since about two months old, so having him in our room in the Pack'n'Play was just better for our piece of mind until the weather warmed up to a point we knew would be comfortable for him to transition. As with most things, he took the whole changeover in stride, and has had no problems with the move. If anything, he's sleeping a little better because he isn't hearing us move around while he's trying to sleep. For now, we are just using a V-Tech audio monitor that we picked up on vacation until I can convince T to set up the fancier video monitor. C isn't trying to crawl out of the crib just yet, so this has been working fine for the time being.

We've got a little mouthpiece on our hands! C has started talking using single and multiple consonants this month. We had to go all the way to Florida (more on this soon!) to get some actual sounds other than squeals and laughter, but on Wednesday, April 1st, he started using single consonants. 'Ga' was the favorite - not the easiest sound to make, but his 'Ga-ramma' was in his face most of the day trying to get him to tell her a story, so this might have been the ticket! Thursday, April 2nd, he'd had enough of single consonants, and his first word was 'Ma-Ma' (victory!) followed within seconds by 'Da-Da' (I doubt he realizes these are words of course, but learning to make double-consonant sounds is a pretty big deal!). As the day progressed, he also told us all about 'Ra-Ra', 'Ga-Ga', 'Ba-Ba', and  'Na-Na' . He's a bit of a cautious heart, so it seems that he stored up all of his stories until he had the biggest audience possible to share them with - nearly all of my family was along for the trip. Since our vacation, he's been less adventurous with his sounds, and has been sticking to his favorites 'Ra-Ra-Ra' and 'Da-Da-Da'.

In preparation for our warm weather vacation, C spent some time working on his beach bod, and learning from the best all about lifting weights. He loves to watch T while he's lifting, so when I spotted these two pound weights at the store the other day, it was a sign. Grandma J has some one pounders that Uncle N & T showed C how to use, and the rest was history!

C has had an absolute blast spending more time with Cousin J this past month. Now that the boys are both a little older, playtime has been so much fun. Cousin J is far more mobile than C, so it has been fun to see C as he sits and watches him like a hawk while J crawls and runs around. Somehow, C doesn't have any tractors at home to play with (how is this possible?), so when cousin J came to visit, he brought one along and showed him all about how to play farm and make the tractor sound. 

As I mentioned in the favorites, C has been into trust falls this month. He hasn't figured out yet how to crawl, go from lying down to sitting, or sitting to standing, but he is getting pretty cocky about his standing capabilities, and often times will take one or both hands off whatever piece of furniture he is using for support, fully expecting someone to catch him if he looses his balance. He's not using his feet to cruise just yet, but we are convinced that he will likely skip right over crawling and go straight to walking.



Let the countdown to one begin!