Alex is 10 months!

 Alex is now 10 months old (on Mar. 2).  Unbelievable!  I realize I never posted an update at 9 months.  Maybe I will just post about his 9 month Dr. visit and post some updates over the past few months.  He had his 9 month visit on Feb. 10th.  He weighed 15# 12 oz (now < 3%) and was 25 3/4 inches (also < 3%), head circumference was 17 7/8 inches (55% -still a nice size brain).  His hemoglobin was 12.7.  We talked with our pediatrician about his limited diet (bananas, pears, avocado, cream of buckwheat and infant rice cereal) and the concerns we have.  We are wondering if Alex is getting what he needs with his limited diet and my limited diet.  Our Dr. feels that he his, he is not anemic (hemoglobin was good) and he looks healthy.  Alex might just be a petite guy.  Dr. also said he will test him for food allergies but wants to wait til he is at least one year due to some false negatives when tested too early.  Continue to slowly advance his diet.

He has had varying degrees of cold symptoms for 4 weeks now~ since beginning of Feb. (runny nose, chest cough, croupy cough, fever) he never gets completely better before the symptoms come back again.  I try to tell myself it is just him being exposed to all these viruses out there through generous carriers (his brothers) but I always go back to his food issues.  So hard for me not to.

Pictures!

Feb. 14, 9 1/2 months

crawled over to the fireplace and pulled himself up for the first time

a bit scary for me, he was unsteady and I was afraid he would face plant into the stones!

mighty proud of himself

Feb. 15, 9 1/2 months

using this mesh thing to eat a banana

the mesh thing is nice, I don't have to spoon feed him ~ which allows me to eat

but it is really messy!  he is such a clean eater when I spoon feed him!

and cleaning out the mesh thing is pretty challenging to get it completely clean.

and if you can't get it clean ~ GROSS! all that bacteria!

Feb. 17

I don't have very many recent pictures of this little guy sleeping.

When he is asleep, I am usually running around the house trying to see how many tasks I can complete.

When I took this picture, he was going to sleep on his own.

The little sleeping dog behind him (Andrew & Carson got this for him when he was born) has buttons on it to play music.  He would push these buttons and play until he fell asleep.  It was wonderful. 

Currently it is taking A LOT of work to get him to go to sleep and then you lay him down and he wakes up.

At night he continues to wake up way too frequently.  I am exhausted, so he ends up in bed with us.

Feb. 25 ~ 9 1/2 + months

He will pull himself up to many different things now.  He hasn't mastered getting down yet.  Sometimes he will stand for really long periods of time and then fuss until someone comes and helps him down.  One time his legs were even slipping further and further apart and he was doing the splits!

~  I continue to love the little noises he makes with his tongue...clicking his tongue, sucking on his top lip.
~  I love when he gets excited about something (seeing one of us enter the room) he starts doing a little             bouncy dance with his upper body...even if he is held.
~  He claps and waves and almost sounds like he says "hi", he mimics the sound and tone that we use.
~  I think he also might be saying "ma", he usually only says it when he is crawling towards me and wants me to pick him up.
~  Will NOT hold still for diaper changes, especially now that he has figured out how to turn off the light and the light switch is conveniently close to his changing table.  Not easy to diaper a baby, who won't hold still, in the dark.
~  He is such a happy little guy, just crawls around and plays.  Smiles so easily.
~  His grin remains toothless, though he can really hurt your arm with the bites he gives.
~  Gives you little pats on the back when you hold him.