11 Month Update

I'm sure I sound like a broken record, but I just can't believe that Ryder is 11 months old.  Because he is growing and developing so quickly now, it is difficult to keep up with his milestones in a monthly blog post, but I'll certainly do my best.

As of 10.5 months old, Ryder was consistently saying "uhoh" and "hi" or "hey."  He now says both of these things ALL.THE.TIME.  99% of the time, it is ridiculously adorable, but the "uhoh" can get old.  In particular, the preemptive "uhoh" can drive me a bit batty.  Ryder loves to purposely drop his lovey, pacifiers and toys.  He says "uhoh" and then drops them.  I've tried to reason with him and explain that "uhoh" is a term typically used after something is accidentally dropped... but to no avail.  Oh well.  Ryder will occassionally repeat "dada" or "mama" if we bait it out of him, but he hasn't used either term with any purpose.  He also still barks pretty regularly.  He barks at Gaudi, at his toy dogs, at pictures of dogs (and sometimes, at pictures of other random animals), and occasionally, he barks for no apparent reason at all.  At the 11 month mark, Ryder also started saying "tweet-tweet" when we pointed to a puzzle piece in the shape of a bird... but that seemed to be short lived.  He did it for a few days, and I haven't been able to coax it back out of him.

On Saturday, October 20th, I first noticed that Ryder was cutting his top two front teeth.  Now, several weeks later, the teeth are still slowly making their way down.  I don't remember his bottom two teeth taking nearly this long.  I keep wondering whether his top teeth are stuck and whether this will require dental intervention, and then I remind myself that I'm a clueless first-time mom and that this is probably the normal pace for tooth development.

Ryder still regularly throws his pacifiers over the top of his crib and then proceeds to get mad.  I only give him two pacifiers in his crib at night.  Some people have asked me why I don't just toss a whole bunch of pacis in his crib.  This is so for two reasons: (1) there is something that bothers me about the idea of my baby sleeping amongst dozens of pacis at night.  It seems messy and chaotic.  And I'm worried that he would roll over them and wake himself during the night, and (2) I'm absolutely certain that he would simply proceed to throw them all over the railing, one by one, until there would be dozens of pacis to pick up and rinse instead of just two.  I'm not claiming that these reasons are rational or legit... I'm just offering an explanation.  Two seems like a good number because it is more than one.

My goal has been to start limiting pacifiers to naps and night time once Ryder hits one year old.  For the most part, I don't think that this will be difficult.  Although Ryder does love his paci at times, he doesn't currently just sit around with it in his mouth.  We do offer it to him here and there during the day if he is fussy.  We also offer it to him during car rides.  But the initial transition to pacis only in the crib shouldn't be much of a challenge.  I'm more concerned about taking the paci away altogether.  I haven't decided when I'm going to try to do this.  Many moms have strong opinions on this issue, and I really have no clue what's best.  At the moment, I think that Ryder is pretty dependent on the paci during the night.  He falls asleep with it in his mouth, and if he wakes during the night, he immediately finds it and plugs himself.  I certainly don't want to mess with his awesome sleep habits, so I guess i'll just deal with the night time paci issue later.

In sharp contrast to my prior posts complaining about Ryder's picking eating habits, he now eats EVERYTHING.  He pretty much doesn't meet a finger food that he doesn't like.  Now and then he'll randomly diss something, but it's pretty rare.  He still loves fruit best (especially bananas, mandarin oranges and kiwis).  He also loves peas.  Just to give an idea of some of the other foods he has eaten recently:  macaroni and cheese, squash, zuchini, turkey, chicken, avocado, broccoli, cheese (he prefers shredded), pancakes (another favorite!), rice (especially Mexican)...

Ryder enjoying mexican rice, tomatoes, shredded cheese, chicken and tortillas at Uncle Julio's

I also introduced Ryder to whole cow's milk once he turned 11 months old.  Ideally, he's supposed to transition from forumula to milk at a year, so I knew it was time to introduce it to him and let him practice with the sippy cup.  He definitely likes (or at least doesn't mind) the taste of the milk.  He didn't make any type of interesting facial expression when he first tried it.  But I'm definitely concerned about the full-out transition.  He is doing much better with the sippy cup but still loses interest quickly and never drinks a significant quantity from his cup.  I've been offering him both milk and water in a sippy cup throughout the day, and I'd probably say that I've never gotten him to consume more than 2 ounces total of liquid in a day (via sippy cup).  This especially concerns me because he has already weaned himself almost entirely from bottles.  By the 11 month mark, he was refusing all bottles except for the one that I give him first thing in the morning.  After talking to his teacher at school about it on several occasions, I finally gave my blessing for her to stop trying (she was still making him a small bottle each day but he was consistently pushing it away and refusing to drink it).  So as of 11 months and 1 week old, he was (and still is) down to one bottle a day (6 oz).  I'm definitely concerned about Ryder's liquid intake in general.  If he is only having 6 oz. of formula plus 2 oz of milk or water.... it just doesn't seem like enough!  But at this point, I haven't found any way around it.  I'm going to discuss it with Dr. Friedman at his next check-up and see if he has any suggestions.  I'm hoping that the issue will just correct itself in time and that he'll just turn a corner at some point and start drinking more from his sippy.  If you are a mom that is reading this post and you have a suggestion, please send it my way!

[Later edited to add: On November 15, 2012, I gave Ryder his very last bottle of formula.  He made it clear that he was quite simply done with bottles.  I'm excited to be done with buying formula and hand-washing bottles, but I'm definitely a little bit sad to be done babying my baby.]

At 10.5 months, Ryder started dancing to music.  It's just as cute as you'd imagine.  He doesn't do it every time he hears music, but he probably does it about 75% of the time (as long as he is in a good mood).  He has two dance styles.  The first one is a head-to-tie bopping up and down (while in the sitting position).  The second one is a swinging motion that he does with his hands.  He clasps his hands together and swings his arms back and forth as if he was rocking a baby.  I love both styles!

On November 8, 2012, Ryder hit a huge and exciting milestone.  He pulled himself to standing!  It was so sudden and seemingly easy for him, that I was convinced that he must have already been doing it at school and that I just hadn't seen it yet.  But I confirmed with his teachers and with Peggie that none of them had ever seen him pull up before.  Yay for getting to be the first one to witness such a cool milestone!  It was a Thursday night and Ryder and I were playing while waiting for Blake to get home from work.  Ryder was crawling around the house like a crazed-loon.  He automatically darts to the dog bowls first.  Once I beat him there and pick the bowls up before he can start splashing around, he pouts at me and then moves on.  His next target is the pantry.  The door is usually ajar, so he likes to swing it open and closed.  Once I beat him there and close the door before he can start his swinging routine (a finger-smashing hazard), he pouts at me and then moves on to Gaudi's crate.  At that point, I sit on the couch and allow him to swing Gaudi's crate door open and shut for a while (much less of a finger-smashing hazard).  When he gets tired of that (or when he gets fustrated because he can't figure out how to actually crawl inside of the crate due to the two inch barrier at the base of the crate that he can't seem to climb over), he typically starts fussing and I have to pick him up.  But on this particular night, something drew his attention to the front door.  He made his way to the door, crawled right up to the window sill next to the door, and pulled himself right on up.  I was absolutely shocked because I had seen no indication in the prior weeks that Ryder was anywhere close to hitting this milestone.  I'd certainly never seen him attempt to pull up on anything, and he whenever I was placing him in a standing position, he was immediately collapsing to the floor.  I ran to get my video camera and was actually able to catch him pulling up for the second time.

I'll sign off with a video of Ryder's pulling up to the standing position for the second time in his life:

And a few more recent pictures just for fun:

Keys!