Eleven Months

Brock turned 11 months old yesterday! He's getting so big. In fact, he weighs about 24 pounds now (76th percentile) and is about 31 inches long (91st percentile). This may be surprising to anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis (and knows how much I can say about nothing at all), but I am just at a loss for anything else to say about him turning 11 months. Maybe I'm in shock.

These are some of Brock's patterns and accomplishments between the tenth and eleventh months:

• He's a busy kid these days (as you can see from the pictures above). He is not content to just sit around or be held. He wants to move and stand up and play and wiggle. I keep books in the side pockets of our glider rocker, and he's figured out how to get them now, so anytime I sit with him in the chair (or sit him in it by himself to take pictures), he leans over the side and grabs a book to read. I guess I should be happy he loves books so much.
• He learned how to clap his hands at the beginning of the month and would do it every time we said, "Yaaay!"
• He also learned how to give high fives. I like teaching him all these little tricks and fun responses, but I think Piper (the dog) still has more tricks in her repertoire than Brock at this point. He's catching up though.
• He can kind of snap his fingers. Whenever he's whining or being fussy for no reason, Blaine has always snapped his fingers to get Brock's attention and then told him, "No whining." It never really stops the whining, but sometimes it's the effort to discipline that counts, right? Anyway, apparently Brock picked up on the finger snap and started putting his pointer finger and thumb together to make a sound that's kind of like a really quiet snap. He does it when he's waving bye bye too on occasion. I'm still not sure if it's intentional, but that's pretty impressive if he already knows how to snap. I don't think I learned how to snap until I was like 10 years old. Maybe we could get him in the Guinness World Records book (It seems like I've said that before about something else he did?).
• He knows who "Daddy" and "Piper" are because he'll look for them when I say their names. He still can't say either one of them though, but I think he may have created his own name for Piper because whenever he's looking for her or talking to her, he says, "Ah-ti, Ah-ti" over and over like that's his version of "Piper". Of course, Blaine wants to rename her "Ah-ti" now.
• He outgrew all his 9 month clothes and is now in 12 month sizes. He still wears size 3 diapers during the day and size 4 at night.
• He can sit himself up easily now and does it all the time. He doesn't even have to have anything to pull up on. He just crawls around and then sits right up when he's ready.
• Since he learned how to pull up last month, he now wants to stand up everywhere. He pulls up on the couch, on his walker, on the baby gate, on me, and anything else that is within reaching distance. He loves standing and he even travels some while holding on, but he hasn't taken the first independent steps yet. He did stand on his own for about three seconds last week, but it was by accident and he looked scared to death.
• He finally cut his top two teeth at 45 weeks. It took almost two months of teething for them to break through the gums, and he was so irritable and fussy with them. He's a completely different baby now though. He hasn't woken up anymore in the middle of the night, and he sleeps longer for his naps now and doesn't wake up crying.
• Sometimes he knows what "no" means. Actually, I'm pretty sure he always knows what "no" means; he just only obeys it sometimes. He's getting better about it though. I've found that one of the hardest things about discipline for me is just being consistent with it. If I tell him not to do something one day, I have to make sure to stay on top of it every day and not go back and forth letting it be ok one day but not ok the next. That's annoying because some days I'm so busy with or tired from everything else that I just don't care if he plays with the trash can or eats the remote control. But if I want him to understand his boundaries, I have to be consistent and clear about what they are. So that's a work in progress.
• One of my favorite developments was that he started drinking whole milk at 46 weeks. I have been exclusively breastfeeding since he was born and never wanted to do formula just because I didn't want to have to spend the money on it, so breastfeeding was the easy, convenient, and economical way for us. (It's not for everyone, and I don't have any judgments about anyone who doesn't breastfeed; I'm just a tightwad and didn't want to pay for it if I didn't need to). He was nursing four times a day still last month, but he started only nursing for 10 minutes or less and was acting uninterested. At the beginning of this month, he got a stomach virus and then afterward wouldn't nurse during his lunchtime or afternoon sessions (when I say he wouldn't nurse, I mean he would scream and pitch a fit and get all worked up when I would try), so I was a little concerned that he wouldn't get enough fluids. When I called the doctor to ask, they said I could start giving him whole milk if he would drink it. And that he did. He loved it from the very first sip I think and even drinks it cold so I don't have to worry with warming it up. Now he's taking about 16 ounces of whole milk from a sippy cup (8 at lunch and 8 at dinner), and he nurses in the morning before breakfast and in the evening just before bed.
• I've noticed more and more over the past couple of months that my little boy is not a patient one. I can't really blame him because he comes by it honestly (patience is not one of my virtues), but man, he can really pitch a fit and throw a temper tantrum. The more active he gets, the more he doesn't like to be held down (i.e., for diaper changes), and the more aware he becomes, the more he wants certain things and wants them immediately. It's kind of sad to me though because he used to be so docile and calm and sweet, and I see that slipping away a little bit as he more frequently acts like a monster. I had hoped he was going to have Blaine's personality, which is pretty laid-back and easy-going and content, and sometimes he's that way, but it seems like more and more he's becoming a little Godzilla baby, roaring to get what he wants and throwing things that he doesn't want and eating people (ok, not really on that last one, but sometimes he looks like he could eat someone!). He's still cuddly and loving, and he's happy more than he's not, but when he's unhappy, he's a terror. There's a little nursery rhyme I remember that personifies what I'm talking about: "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was really, really good, but when she was bad, she was horrid." That's Brock right there; except he's a boy, not a girl.
• He may have his bad days/moments, but overall, I think he's kind of a little ham. As you can see from his eleven-month picture at the bottom, he loves to make goofy faces, and he seems to really get a kick out of making people laugh. We may have a future class clown on our hands.