At 10 months Donny is:
*about 17ish pounds (18?) and who knows how tall. His head is giant, though. It is at least as big as a 12-18 month old.
*crawling all over the place. He started crawling at 9 months and goes back and forth between a standard crawl and an army crawl.
*pulling up to stand. He loves climbing on me and loves standing against mirrors. Guess he loves his own cute face, too!
*waves on cue
*can definitely understand words. I'm seeing more and more that he is understanding some of the things I say. I keep thinking he is so much younger, but he is already turning into a little person!
*says dada, mama, and gibberish. He does direct "dada" at daddy but doesn't usually direct "mama" at me, though I can tell he knows what that word means.
*has 6 teeth. 2 on the bottom and 4 on top.
*Eats anything and everything. He is still nursing and gets most of his nutrition that way, but he is an eating machine. As I've said in previous posts, we decided to skip baby food and let him eat table food as he was ready for it. He is very good at chewing and has been able to feed himself since 6 months. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a baby be able to grasp and chew food as well as he did at 6 or 7 months. Pretty much anything semi-soft he can handle. I've been pretty daring with letting him try new foods and he mostly just eats whatever we do. Some things he loves: fish, any kind of bread, oranges, cut grapes, pears, noodles, soup, rice, yogurt, beef, chicken, steamed veggies, cheese.......everything!!
*is a little better with strangers. Anyone who knows my kids well, knows they are generally NOT ok with strangers and they are both fairly mommy obsessed. It's normal and healthy at their ages, I suppose. Donny seems to be fine with new people holding him as long as daddy or mommy is close by. Hopefully more babysitters will be an option now?
*still waking at night but is steadily getting better so I haven't done much about it. I could either listen to him scream for an hour, or I could soothe him/nurse him for 5 mins and go back to sleep. You can guess which one I prefer. Just like Josie, I'm sure he will get over this when he's ready. I do sometimes make Kevin go in instead which is nice. On average, he wakes maybe 2 times a night and has a a false wake or two in the morning.
*is now sleeping in a crib in his own room. We decided to move him out of our room at about 9 months. It was the right time, I feel. We really loved having him in our room and it definitely helped us all sleep better in the beginning. After he started crawling, sleeping in the pack n play or with us was just not working. No one slept well. He needed more room, and we needed to not get kicked in the face at night. So, we slowly transitioned him into his crib and stopped doing any co-sleeping. At first, he really didn't sleep much better but now he is starting to sleep longer stretches (5 hours? ) He goes down very easy to sleep and almost never cries at all when I put him in the crib. It's nice. I am happy he likes his crib and we didn't have to go through any crying sessions. It's also nice having our own space back and not having to be so quiet when he's asleep. The one downside is the kids now sleep in rooms next to each other so on occasion, they wake each other up. Oh, and I do sometimes miss the nighttime snuggling and morning happy time with the 3 of us : ) Guess I'll look forward to that if/when the next one comes!
*takes 2 naps, 1-2 hours each and sleeps about 12 hours total at night.
* sucks his thumb when he is tired and crawls over to snuggle. LOVE!!!! While he sucks his right thumb, he rubs and plays with his left ear. He almost always falls asleep with his hand on his ear as he has fallen asleep rubbing it. So cute.
*Part of the reason nighttime has been so difficult is that it seems Donny has some sort of seasonal allergy. It's not surprising since Kevin has always had chronic allergies. Since birth Donny has had constant congestion and, at times, irritated eyes. With the cold weather and dryness from the heater, his runny nose would turn into a very clogged nose at night. It was common for him to wake up coughing a couple times a night. He would cough and cough and then cry and cry. I would go to nurse him since sometimes that was the only thing that would stop the coughing. Then he would cry more cause his nose was so stuffed he couldn't eat and breath at the same time. So sad. We tried several humidifiers, steam showers before bed, saline rinses, and even got prescribed allergy medicine. It has finally gotten much better since the weather is warmer and more humid. He no longer coughs a lot at night. This is also why I let him sleep with us longer than Josie did. I felt so bad for him!
I don't have many good pictures of just him to post. It's pretty sad. It's been raining a lot and well, I've been lazy with taking pictures. So, here are a few pictures I scraped up. Now on the agenda is to take some decent pics of the kids!
This is a face Donny makes ALL the time! This is usually how he smiles at people. He scrunches his nose and squints his eyes. So cheesy!
Check out how big his head is in proportion to his body. He's like a cartoon, lol!!
He's already had his first haircut. His hair is out of control! I love it.
Love that handsome little man face!
He loves having something to chew on. Even an entire apple!
I love that face!!!
