Eleven Month Letter

Dear Gabriel,

You are now 11 months old. This means that your 1 year birthday is constantly on my mind. I’m thinking about the details of planning a birthday party for you, but it’s not just to follow the ritual…It’s because I am so excited to celebrate your first year of life!

You have changed SO much, even just in the past month. I had been trying to get you to clap your hands for a long time. You would often pick up two toys and bang them together, but you wouldn’t do it with your hands. Then one day last week, you started doing it! Now you clap all the time!

You also started playing peekaboo. I noticed one day in the car that you were playing with a shirt that Elizabeth sent home from daycare. You kept putting it on your head and laughing. I couldn’t figure out why you thought a shirt was so funny. Then when we got home, you started doing it with a blanket, and I could tell that you were hiding your face and then uncovering it. We, of course, make a big deal about this and clap and praise you for how clever you are.

I noticed this week that you have two more teeth through the gum. They are on either side of the two middle top teeth. It’s kind of crazy for me to think of you with a full set of teeth! Your little grin with two on top and two on bottom is so adorable. You’re really learning to use your teeth, too. You bite Cheerios in half and take bites of crackers. Last night you bit the spoon I was feeding you with and wouldn’t give it back. You tried out your bite while nursing the other night, too…which was NOT COOL.

Your adjustment to formula during the day went very smoothly. And you’re getting pretty good at holding your bottle or your sippy cup by yourself. This month Elizabeth is starting to transition you to whole milk so that you can be done with formula when you’re a year old. I don’t have a real plan as far as how long to continue our morning and bedtime nursing…I think we’ll just play it by ear. It still works for both of us right now, so we’ll keep on.

You’ve been trying lots of new foods. You love French fries and sweet potato fries. You eat cooked baby carrots, banana, strawberries, peaches, and graham crackers. You like the small bites of cake or brownie that I give you. And you learned to drink from a straw because you apparently like root beer, sprite, and cherry limeades.

Your ear tube surgery is proving to be the good decision I thought it would be. You had a cold this past month that surely would have become an ear infection without putting the tubes in. It’s encouraging that you’ve been able to go over a month without any antibiotics. We have had to coat most of your body in Lamisil for the past couple of weeks, though. You picked up ringworm somewhere, and instead of having one spot, you had spots on both legs, your back, sides, and tummy. I’m just thankful that it didn’t get on your face or scalp.

While inspecting your skin for ringworm spots, I noticed that a small little freckle has appeared right in the crease of your right leg where it meets your body. I keep watching for more little freckles to pop up since both your dad and I have quite a few. Who knows where the next one will be?!

This past Sunday was my first Mother’s Day. We spent the day with Grammaw, aunt Jordan, and cousin Will. It was a wonderful, happy day, and it makes me feel blessed to have brought you into this family. I feel blessed that you are here in my life. You make this a beautiful life.

Thank you for making me a mommy,

mama

Clapping!

Please oh please ignore my voice. We don't realize how silly we sound when talking to children.

New Skills

Gabriel's new skills include:

1) Drinking from a straw. Because he wants mommy's root beer or cherry limeade.

2) Standing up in his crib and chewing on the top rail. We find him with little black flakes of paint on his chin sometimes. Awesome. Hopefully it's not lead-based paint...

3) Having ringworm. Which is terrific. Though he doesn't seem bothered by it at all, so that's good.

Ten Month Letter

Dear Gabriel,

You are now 10 months old. Time is flying by more quickly than I ever thought it could.

Since figuring out how to crawl last month, you are now pulling up to standing while holding on to furniture. Today I even saw you take a couple of little steps as you cruised along the couch. You’ll be running all over the place before I know it!

A couple of weeks ago we bit the surgery bullet and had tubes put in your ears. You were on antibiotics for the sixth time in six months, so we decided it was time to do something more aggressive about it. I had a little bit of anxiety about sending you away behind closed doors for a surgical procedure that required anesthesia, but when it came time for the procedure, I was really at peace about it. I know it was the right thing to do for you. The only bad thing about the whole thing was the half hour after the surgery when you were coming out of anesthesia. You really were not a fan of that feeling at all.

Since the surgery, it seems that you are sleeping better at night. Which means your days are a bit better as well. You are playing independently more and are less clingy and fussy overall. I should knock on wood now, because I know as soon as I say these things aloud, something will cause a set back.

We’ve been working on eating more table foods…you still have some texture issues, but you’re really happy when you can feed yourself. You’ve been eating a LOT of Cheerios lately because you love being able to pick them up and put them in your mouth. We also realized that you like French fries, so we’ve let you eat some roasted potato pieces. We’re going to try sweet potato fries and cooked carrots soon.

We started supplementing some of your liquid nutrition with formula this week. I gave myself permission to stop working so hard to pump enough milk for you to have breast milk all day at daycare. The pumping routine takes a lot of dedication, and I found that I was having trouble staying committed to it. The plan is to keep nursing in the morning and at bedtime, but to have formula bottles during the day. I think making it to 10 months without any formula is an amazing accomplishment for the two of us considering that I was worried that you wouldn’t ever nurse properly before the tongue tie was fixed. I am so glad that I stuck with it and provided you with breast milk for almost a year!

You haven’t really picked up any new syllables, but you’ve been playing with spitting sounds lately. And you do this funny thing where you suck your lips in around your gums and then exhale strongly a few times through your nose. Oh and you do this other funny thing with your mouth where you kind of suck your lips around your gums while you babble. It kind of makes it look like you have a beak or something.

You’re just growing so fast. It seems like it’s all happening so fast! At night while I rock you before bedtime, I just stare at your sweet face and try to hold these moments in my heart. I breathe you in and let your existence fill my heart and my soul. It could have been a terrible day in every other respect, but holding your sleeping little body in my arms can heal all of the day’s damage.

You’re like magic.

Love,

mama

Easter 2012

Aunt Joanah took photos of Gabriel and his cousin Will on Easter Sunday.
Thank you JoJo!

Yoga, Spoons, Laughing, and Surgery

We've been trying out bathtub yoga.

We've also been trying to hold the spoon.

And we've been laughing a lot.

And tomorrow we're having surgery to put tubes in the ears. Hopefully we'll have many fewer ear infections after that!

Various Updates

At G's 9 month well-check appointment, he was:
weight: 21 pounds 12 ounces (70%)
height: 29 1/4 inches (80%)
head circ: 47 cm (90%)

Topic 1: Mobility
Gabriel is crawling very well now. He can get into anything he wants to. He pulled all the DVDs off Grammaw's shelves. He's pulling up onto his knees really well now, too. And today, while holding onto mama, he managed to stand up. I'm not sure he could have done it without the little bit of help I gave him, but I imagine he'll do that on his own soon.

Topic 2: Family Outings
We took Gabriel to the park last Saturday to help celebrate his cousin Blake's birthday. He loves being outside, so this was a good day for him. He also got to try out the swings!

Topic 3: Ears
This little monkey has been fairly plagued by ear infections. He has been on 5 rounds of antibiotics since November. So, today we met with an ENT to discuss what we should do about it. The doctor could see some fluid in each ear, and a hearing exam confirmed that the fluid is preventing his ear drums from vibrating quite as well as they should. He has some very minor hearing loss from that. That in itself is not too concerning, so we are not pursuing PE tubes immediately. We settled on a moderate approach of checking his ears again in a month to see if his body naturally resolves the fluid in his ears. We're also keeping in mind that we are coming out of cold season, so hopefully his likelihood of ear infection is decreasing. If he still has the fluid in a month or so or if he gets another ear infection in the next two months, we will most likely choose to be more aggressive and have surgery to put in tubes. I just want him to stop getting these back to back to back infections that we can't seem to get rid of. Whatever that takes.