Eleven months

James,

I am in total denial that you are almost a year old.  I don't know where the last year has gone! Where is my 6 pound baby that I brought home from the hospital and who had to wear preemie clothes?!? You are developing such a wonderful personality and we love seeing you grow but I wish you would SLOW DOWN just a little!

This month has been huge for you development wise.  You have, thankfully, mastered getting down from standing up and are proficient at cruising around furniture now.  In fact, if I sit behind you and hold out my hands and ask you to come to me you try walking to me!  You aren't scared to try to take those steps but you lose your balance and your legs buckle quickly.  But since you are so fearless I wouldn't be surprised if you're walking earlier than your sister did.

Your crawling has changed this month and it's hilarious.  You rarely army crawl anymore but fluctuate back and forth between true hands and knees crawling and crawling on one knee with the other pulled up to your tummy.  I honestly can't describe it but it's hilarious to watch and seems so counter-productive but you're amazingly fast at it!

Your sleep has gotten back to normal this month once both of your top teeth came through and you learned to get down from standing.  We are thankful for that!  You are still taking two naps a day (9:30 - 11 and 1-3:30) but do fine when we go to church and you miss your morning nap in the nursery.  That makes me relax since I was a little concerned about you going all morning without a nap when school starts in a few weeks but you do really well with it.

In the last week we started transition you off of nursing.  I need you to drink something while you're at school in a few weeks and have a lot of frozen milk so we are down to one morning feeding a day and will probably drop that one this week.  So far you enjoy playing with and spilling milk from your cups rather than drinking out of them but occasionally you will get a sip.  Charlotte didn't take to the cup until a day or two after I weaned her completely either so I'm hoping you'll pick it up soon.  It's an adjustment dropping those feedings and Charlotte is very confused as to why I'm not feeding you during the day but you're eating enough to keep up with what you were drinking.

Speaking of eating, you will down almost anything we put in front of you.  Fruit is still a favorite and you will devour basically any kind (mango's, strawberries, pears, apples....).  We gave you a cereal bar recently and you LOVED it but make the biggest mess with it.  I typically give you the crusts that I cut off of Sissy's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and you enjoy them.  You've had some peanut butter and seemed to enjoy it so it's nice to know that you aren't allergic.  A funny development this month is if you hear us getting something out (crackers, cereal, chips, etc) you will start whining until we give you something to eat.  You have good ears and even if you're in the den you'll hear the crackle of the wrapping and beeline it to the kitchen for a snack.

Now that you're not nursing during the day you have started "sharing" snacks with Charlotte.  I tried giving you a bowl of cherrio's or something to munch on but you would just pour the bowl upside down and eat from the floor until you got distracted from something else.  Then, when I went to clean it up, you would race back to your mess and whine at me until I gave you back the bowl with the cleaned up food in it and proceed to dump it out and eat some more.  Thankfully, in the last week or so you've gotten the hang of the snack trap and are doing better eating out of it.  But sometimes we still give Charlotte a snack trap full of Club Cracker mini's and have her dole them out to you.  The doling of snacks and your mobility has caused you to constantly trail after your sister like a lost puppy.  For the most part she is very good about playing with you and being sweet but she's still having to learn that if she doesn't want you to play with it she's got to put it out of your reach!

We transitioned you to taking baths in the actual tub this month.  You love splashing around in the water although I feel bad for you because you basically just have some random tupperware in your tub while your sister has lots of bath toys.  You don't seem to mind though!  Maybe you'll get some bath toys for your birthday!

You're still in size 3 diapers and probably weigh between 17 and 18 pounds.  You can wear most 12 month outfits but can also still fit into 9 month ones.  You are still wearing the Hanna Andersson outfits that we got for your 6 month pictures too so you're sizing it kind of all over the place.  We've noticed that your size 1 Angel shoes are pretty tight now and your size 2 Angel sandals fit good.  We've got to get you some new shoes before school starts!

Over the past few days you've also started being a lot more verbal.  You say "Luca" a lot now and sometimes say "Mama".  You also mimicked me saying "Nay" the other day talking about horses but you haven't repeated that one.  You babble a lot and look at us like we're supposed to understand you so I'll be interested to see if your verbal ability takes off in the next few weeks.

We are planning for your birthday and looking forward to celebrating you!  You are the sweetest little boy and we can't imagine life without you!  We love you little one!
love, Mommy

*James at months one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

*Charlotte at months one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve