And Then There Were Four: Roman

I realize these are not very good pictures (in the technical sense).
They are four of about 60 that I had to take this time to try to get just ONE decent monthly picture.
He's a busy guy these days.

Roman turned nine months old back in February. I find that I'm getting excited about the first year coming to a close in just a few months because it means no more monthly updates, which means I will no longer feel guilty for posting monthly updates three weeks late. If we have a third child, his or her monthly updates will probably all just be in one big post at the end of the first year.

But I still find them valuable, even if they are a little laborious and take up my precious Downton Abbey watching, World War Z reading, ~~nap~~, um, Bible study time. So I press on... three more months.

At his checkup, Roman was only about 18 pounds and 28 inches long (I think, or it may have only been 27 inches... I forgot to write it down). That was a little surprising to me because he seems heavier than that. Brock was 20 pounds by 9 months, and Roman eats a lot more than Brock ever did, but he's much more active than Brock was too. He's healthy so that's really all I'm worried about.

Anyway, these are some of the things he was doing between the eighth and ninth month:

He started becoming very impatient when he wanted something, and he learned how to throw real tantrums, particularly for food. You can't put him in the highchair unless the food is right there ready to go on the tray. Well, you can, but you'll have to listen to him scream and cry like someone is torturing him if you make him wait five seconds. Seriously, you see me right here opening up your jar of peas and getting a spoon; you know it's coming; why are you freaking out? Such an inefficient use of your energies, my sweet son.
He dropped down to two consistent naps this month, each one about an hour and a half long. He was taking the first one around 9:30 or 10:00 and the second one around 1:30 or 2:00. He's gotten very predictable with his daytime sleep now, so that's nice.
He started sleeping pretty consistently from about 7:45 at night to 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning. Usually if he wakes any earlier than 6:30, he just eats and then goes back to sleep for another hour or two. There were a couple weeks this month when he would wake up around 3:30 or 4:00 every night, and at first I would go in to feed him, but then I realized that it was most likely just teething not hunger, so Blaine took over the comforting for a couple nights in a row, and then he quit waking up after that (apparently it's not worth waking up in the middle of the night if it's just for Dad).
He finally dropped the dreamfeed this month. Yaay. He just wouldn't wake up enough when I would go to feed him for it, only nursing for maybe two minutes or not at all, so I knew it was the end. He kept it a lot longer than Brock, so I was glad to see it go.
He also moved to a four hour eating schedule this month. Another yaay. He just wouldn't be interested in food before that four hour mark (sometimes 3.5 hours), and he was able to stay awake longer (about 2 hours) before naps, so it was an easy transition.
He's crawling all over the place now and is no longer content to sit still (note the picture at the top). Gone are the days of the peaceful, observant baby. He wants to participate in everything now. And like his brother, he doesn't have a normal crawl either. He tucks one leg underneath himself and only crawls on one knee while scooting on the other leg. It gets him where he wants to go though, so whatever works.
He figured out how to move from sitting to laying down, and he can sit himself up really well now. He was trying to pull up from sitting to standing around the middle of the month, and by the end of month, he could pull himself up in his crib or on anything else that was pretty sturdy and could bear his weight. Sitting back down was a different story. Just like every other irrational development, he had some kind of physical compulsion to stand up when we would lay him down for naps. As soon as his back hit the crib, he would flip over, crawl to the rails, lift himself up, laugh and smile and talk for approximately 30 seconds, then begin screaming like someone had just put him on the world's scariest roller coaster until one of us went to lay him back down. Ok, maybe that wouldn't be so bad if he did it once each time then went to sleep, but we had to go through this cycle about 15 times for each nap for about a week and a half. Lay him down, watch him flip and crawl and smile, walk out the door, wait outside door 30 seconds, 3...2...1... SCREAM, go back in, lay him down... lather, rinse, repeat. Babies. Are. Ridiculous.
Moving on. He definitely knows his name now. He especially likes it when his name is followed by the word, "No." Not that he responds correctly to that word. He smiles or even laughs when he's told not to do something, which is actually really cute and funny, but he can never know that we think that because it quickly becomes not cute and not funny, so we can't positively reinforce it now. (There's a lot of smiling behind our hands or with our faces turned).
He said his first word this month: Bye bye. It's also the first (and only) sign language sign he learned because he started waving bye bye too.
For my future reference, he still spits up occasionally, but it is much less frequent now.
Finally, he started showing some of the normal separation anxiety stuff this month, but it has not been nearly as bad as Brock's. It was interesting because I got one of those BabyCenter emails that said, "You're baby may start showing signs of separation anxiety soon" and then the next day he didn't want anyone other than Blaine or me to hold him. He would act more wary of strangers and even family members, and he would have to examine people for a few minutes before he was willing to go to them. But by the end of the month, it wasn't affecting him much at all unless he was in a bad mood or tired. This was much different from Brock, who still gets anxious when we drop him off at church if it's not with his normal teachers or in his normal room. I guess Roman will be a lot more flexible and extroverted than Brock.

Now, on to the pictures:

Brock wanted to have his "monthly picture" made too, and he wanted to act like Roman while I was taking the pictures, so that first one is him trying (pretty successfully) to dive off of the front of the chair. The bottom two show how both of our boys love their little blankies. This is how they self-soothe (Brock, with the covert thumb-sucking, and Roman, with the heavy metal rock band fingers).