3/4 of a Year!

Greyden is 9 months old! Have you ever tried to take a picture of a 9 month old? It's not easy. Long gone are the days when I could prop him up against a pillow, hope he didn't tip over, and snap away. I mean, let's be honest, it's not like he was going anywhere, right? This months photo shoot took no less than an hour and a half. Seriously. And the majority of that hour was spent dragging him back to where I had originally set him. The kid can move! He's 18 pounds, 6 ounces (20th percentile) and 28.5 inches long (55th percentile). Oh, and his melon is 45 centimeters around (40th percentile).

Ever wonder what a baby sees when he looks outside?

How about the big, scary monsters?

By nine months into this mess you'd think this whole "child-rearing" thing would have gotten easier, since we're slowly becoming more experienced parents. If this was your thought, then I hate to break it to you, but you thought wrong.


We're currently having some issues with Junior taking his bottles. He has decided that he only wants one 5 ounce bottle per day at daycare. This is in sharp contrast to the three 5 ounce bottles he was taking each day just a few short weeks ago. How is this kid who doesn't want to eat mine you ask? Easy, he's hoovering solid foods like they're going out of style. I know that the majority of his nutrients are supposed to come from breastmilk or formula until he's 1, but I can't force feed the kid a bottle. Trust me, I've tried. And so far the only surefire way that I can think of to get him to take his milk is by putting it in a beer bottle (not that we've tried, but the kid is seriously obsessed with them). Unfortunately daycare frowns on this technique, so until he decides that he's back on the Breastmilk Bandwagon my hands are tied.


Feeding solids brings up yet another issue. Right now I make most of his food. I just steam or bake up some fruits or veggies, run them through my food processor until they're pureed, and freeze them into ice cube trays. This was all going along well and good until the other day when I realized that he's almost 1 year old. That means he's going to be on table foods very, very soon. Or at least he's supposed to be. Which means that we should probably be working hard core on his eating finger foods. I know, I know. We've been slacking, but don't call CPS on us just yet. (Who am I kidding? If you were going to call them, you would have done it at the breastmilk in the beer bottle.) We've done a little bit of finger food with him. He gets puffs as a snack at both daycare and home, and we also give him pieces of diced fruit from those little Dole cups. Oh, and bananas:

The problem with finger foods is that he gets frustrated easily. He hasn't quite mastered his pincer grasp, so the only way he can pick things up is with his entire fist. Then he has to figure out how to get the food from the palm of his hand into his mouth. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn't. So Junior has gotten resourceful. Instead of trying to pick things up with his hands, he's decided it's easier to just put his face directly on the tray and suck the food up that way. Unfortunately even that technique has it's downside. For example, this: 

No, he didn't have any idea that there was a puff stuck to the end of his nose. It was there for at least 5 minutes before mommy stopped laughing long enough to pull it off.


So even though we've introduced a few finger foods, I'd really like to get to the point where Junior is eating what we eat. I'll be the first to admit that I am incredibly lazy and really don't want to have to prepare separate meals for him 3 times a day. So starting yesterday...

Yes, that's a T-bone. Done medium-rare for all of you steak snobs out there. He ate most of it too (and obviously ignored the Dole fruit pieces). I finally had to take it away when he got about halfway through it and began trying to shove the rest of it in his mouth. He eats steak like his Daddy. And since I am completely grossed out by even the mere idea of pureeing meat, this is how we're going to be doing it. Liquid chicken just doesn't do it for me.


One of the other issues we're having is with his crawling. Actually, he's not having an issue with it at all. He's almost there. It's me that's having the issue. Once Greyden starts crawling he has to move up to the next classroom at school. Are you kidding me? Not only are we finally getting his routines down in the class we're in now, but I am 100% comfortable with his teachers. And they've pretty much figured out that most of the time my brain isn't functioning properly and don't hold it against me when I forget to fill out his sign in sheet for the 3 straight day in a row. I don't even do well when he has a substitute for a day and they want me to put him in a completely different room with a completely different set of teachers? (insert hyperventilating here.) I may be a bit of a control freak so this whole moving thing is NOT sitting well with me. Luckily, his teachers adore him and don't want him moving up either. They make sure to immediately pick Greyden up and hold on to him when the director or her staff walk into the room so that he can't army crawl his way to their feet and pull himself up. Because he will do that. According to his teachers, the kid is hellbent on showing off his newfound skillz every chance he gets. 

And last but not least, it may be time to start baby proofing. Please see exhibit #1, Greyden in his walker, below:

And exhibit #2:

It might also be time to Daddy Proof Greyden from Daddy and Uncle Kevin. Although I can't imagine why.

Our first (okay, our only) step so far in the baby proofing saga is putting down a soft floor for him to play on. We went from this:

To this:

Nice huh? Fortunately you can't see the floor lamp with the nice, long cord that is plugged in in the background. That will probably end up being baby proofing step 2.