Dear Joseph,

You turned 11 months old this week.  How on earth is the time flying by so quickly?

It won’t be long before you’re a toddler, and I’m cherishing these last few weeks of “babyhood”.  You’re such a sweet, funny, clever little boy and we love watching you grow and change.  Here are some things that you’ve been up to…

Movement

You are ready to walk.  I know it.  Your dad knows it.  I think that you know it.  However, you still love to hold a hand, a wall, a piece of furniture, or whatever else is nearby rather than take unassisted steps.  Not that we mind holding your hands – we love it, and so do you!

You love to climb the stairs.  Our apartment entry has a few feet of wooden flooring, and then it’s 6 steps down to the main apartment.  You figured out how to climb those things lickety-split and love to sit up there.  There are so many things to do in the entry way, after all: spinning the wheels on your stroller, attempting to climb the coat tree, stretching with all of your might for the door handle and then yelling loudly when you can’t reach it, and attempting to pry the socket plugs from the outlets.  You still love outlets, cords, and anything that might result in death or serious maiming.  It’s as though they’ve got an invisible baby-bullseye stamped on them somewhere, and you always head straight for ’em.

We take walks with you.  Real walks where either I or your daddy are holding one hand and you get to set the direction.  You love to walk in and explore the park near our home.  You took some of your first steps there and we visit it frequently.  You’ve fallen several times, but that’s all part of the learning process.

Eating

Once you hit 11 months, we dropped that afternoon nursing time.  You know only nurse 1 time a day, which is immediately after breakfast.  Both Chris and I have commented that you may not be ready to give that last session up by the time you’re a year old.  You eat a big breakfast but have started to cry if I don’t nurse you within a few minutes of getting you out of your chair.  That’s pretty odd for you, and you quiet down as soon as you nurse and are then as happy as a clam.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m not opposed to continuing the post-breakfast nursing, if that’s what you need 🙂  As with everything else, we’ll see how it goes and make a decision when the time comes.

You certainly aren’t turning your nose up at any of the solid foods we give you.  You love to eat, baby!  Breakfast is usually 2 bowls of homemade porridge and some fruit, plus lots of water.  You nurse very shortly after that, and then eat lunch around noon.  Lunch is usually leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, if we’re going to be home.  If we’ll be out, then it’s usually something that can be easily ported around.  Whatever the case, lunch always has some protein, some veggies, some fruit, and water.

Yes, that is you, using a spoon.  You love to try to feed yourself.  Sometimes it makes it in, sometimes it doesn’t.  You get incredibly excited whenever I let you dish your spoon into the bowl and are sad if I take the spoon away.  This morning, I had to let you have 1 spoon while I fed you with another.  You are such a goober!

You have an afternoon snack around 4pm.  This isn’t much: some fruit or some veggies.  It’s important, though.  If you skip your snack, then I have a hard time getting dinner together because you’re upset and hungry.  I would be to, if I were growing as much as you are every single day!  So, no skipping snack time 🙂  We did try a mid-morning snack but this didn’t make much sense.  You eat a BIG breakfast and are normally eating for 45 minutes, and then nursing after that.  Once 9am rolls around you start to get sleepy and want to go to bed, then nap till 10:30 or so.  After you wake up, get changed, and drink some water, it’s only a little over an hour till lunch.

Dinner is usually eaten at home.  You like to eat around 6pm and this is probably your shortest meal of the day: only about 25 – 30 minutes long.  You eat when we eat, and you eat what we eat.  You love tomatoes in any form, steamed radishes, carrots, roasted onions, beef, chicken, beans, spinach, kale, plain yoghurt, papaya, oranges, apples, cut-up grapes, kumara, feijoa… the list goes on and on.  You’re not too keen on pasta noodles.  I’ve also just started to introduce you to pink grapefruit.  You’ll eat a bite or two, then no more.  I think that it’s a bit sour for you, but it’s good to try new things!

Talking

You love to make baby talk, and you’ve recently started to say “ma-ma” and “da-da” a lot, though if we ask you say it, you often get shy and opt not to 🙂  If we ask you, “What does the duck say?” you’ll answer with “cack-cack”, which thrills us to no end!  You also do a great job of letting your fingers “talk” for you, especially that pointer finger.  There’s no doubt about what you want – you just point until we get it for you or bring you to it, though I’ve started to make you “work” a little and come toward whatever it is you’re pointing at rather than us being at your constant beck and call.  You don’t always like it when we do this, but I keep reminding myself that it’s good for you to learn that you can get things for yourself 🙂

Sleep

You l-o-v-e to sleep.  Love it.  You haven’t shown any signs of dropping a nap, something for which I’m quite happy.  Your nap times are some of my most productive times of the day, in terms of chores around the house.  You take a morning nap from 9/9:30 – 10:30/10:45a.  Sometimes it’s less than that, but usually no longer than 1.5 hours.  You take an afternoon nap from 2/2:30p – 3:45/4:15p.  The timing varies, but if it’s gotten to 4:30p and you’re still not awake, then I’ll open your nursery door to check on you.  This usually wakes you right up and you’re all smiles!

Once 7pm rolls around, you start rubbing the sleep dust out of your eyes (or is it into your eyes?) and we get you ready for bed.  Your nighttime routine is pretty standard.  Dinner from 6-6:30pm; bath 3 times a week with some bubbles, toys, and lots of laughing (unless you’re overtired, in which case it’s a quick in-and-out bath so as to avoid lots of tears toward the end); on days you don’t take a bath, we dim the lights a little and you play with your toys, we read to you, etc.; after bath or quietly playing, we change your nappy one last time, put you into your pajamas, get you into your sleep sack, and then cuddle with you and read.  Sometimes you start to phase out during the reading and we put you straight to sleep.  Other times, I’ll take you into the nursery, turn off the light, turn on the sleep sheep, give you a pacifier, and cuddle with you and sing to you for a few minutes before laying you down.  You’re normally snoozing by 7:30pm and don’t wake till 6:30am the next day, though we check on your once or twice during the night to be sure you’re alright.

Other Bits and Pieces

You love to do “the snuffle nose”, where you scrunch up that cute little nosey of yours and “snuff-snuff-snuff!”  If we do it to you, you do it right back!  Here’s a very quick clip of what I’m talking about…

You also love R’s scooter!  We’re very happy that he’s letting us borrow it 🙂

You’ve got 4 teeth: 2 upper and 2 lower.  You must be cutting some more because if you can get it in your mouth, you’ll chew on it.  Hard.  You’ve also started to do some love bites, where you come up to us and bite our legs.  It hurts!  Some day, like when you’re a teenager and you think we’re giving you a hard time, I’ll remind you about how you used to bite me on the leg 🙂

Love,

Your Mom