Liam at Nine Months

Yesterday was Liam's nine month birthday. It was also Valentine's Day! We spent the vast majority of the day away from home because of Moms' Connection at church in the morning and his nine month check up and a quick trip to Whole Foods in the afternoon. Poor kid didn't really take a nap until 5:00 p.m., which of course threw off his bedtime, but it did allow Will and I to eat our Valentine's dinner of takeout veggie Chinese food by ourselves in peace.

Stats:
Weight: 21.1 pounds (60th percentile)
Height: 30 inches (95th percentile)
Head Size: 17.5 inches (25th percentile)

I definitely would've sworn he weighed more than that, but I know for sure he is longer than that. His leg was scrunched up a little when she made the marks and she rounded down. Head size varies so much depending on where the tape measure is placed on the head. For example, today Liam had a DOC Band adjustment and we had to see a different person than we normally do. The lady today measured his head twice and got a smaller number than our regular lady got two weeks ago. I know his head didn't shrink. I guess no one really knows the size of his head! Growth has definitely slowed down, and he is getting taller and thinner. He needs new pj's, and he's now pretty much wearing all 12 month size clothes. (Why do baby clothes jump from 12 month to 18 month sizes? Why no 15 month sizes?)

Personality: This past month, Liam has started to throw little fits sometimes. It's not uncommon for him to now get upset when we put him in the highchair or lay him down on his back to change his diaper. And when I say fit, I mean he cries a little, usually without tears. Although, sometimes he cries a lot if it's something he really doesn't want to do. When I feed him, he usually calms down after the first bite, but changing diapers has become so difficult! He wants to roll over, sit up, or crawl away the second we lay him down. Thankfully, his changing pad is on the floor. Although, maybe he wouldn't try these shenanigans if it was up on the changing table. Nah, he probably would. Liam will also arch his back and throw his head back now if he doesn't want to be held. I'm not sure how much of a baby's future personality you can see by this age, but if you can, then Liam will not be a timid soul. He does not like being contained. He is strong and determined. He goes after whatever it is he wants. I am already worn out by him. We are definitely going to need a back yard where he can run around. He is, as they say, "all boy," whatever that means. However, he can still be very sweet too, and the kid loves to laugh! He has an amazing sense of humor. He is a fun, fun kid. I know we are going to have lots of great times with him! We already do.

Skills: This month, he's been perfecting his crawling, pulling up, and cruising techniques. He has also gotten very good at walking while holding our hands. He will pull himself up and start bouncing on his legs. Liam has also pulled up and let go of whatever he was holding on to several times, thus standing independently. He can now bend down and pick up a toy on the floor while holding on to something with one hand. When he stands back up, he will sometimes want to hold the toy with both hands, so he ends up standing independently for a second or two. Then he will either sit down on his bottom or put one hand back on whatever he's holding (usually his playard that dominates our living room). We're so proud of him! He also just sometimes lets go without a toy in his hand. He's working out that balance! I really do think he will walk before he's a year old. He did start saying "Mama" this month. It seems to be the first word that he has actually associated with the correct person or thing. I hear it a lot these days, usually when he wants out of his cage (er, playard)! Will says he says it a lot when I leave the house by myself. Liam will wave to himself in the mirror. He likes to see himself. He doesn't really wave at anyone else yet! Liam has been blowing raspberries for a long time, but now he can carry on a "raspberry blowing conversation" with us, going back and forth. He understands the words "no" and "up" (and others, I'm sure, but he always responds appropriately to these two). He still loves to look at books and turn the pages. Overall, he's right on target or maybe even a little ahead of what he should be doing!

Food/Drink: The "Foods Liam Has Eaten" list has greatly expanded this month. Just a few of the new foods include mango, pumpkin, spinach, and raspberries. He has had little tastes of blueberry muffin and tortilla now as well. I did give him yogurt in the past month, and so far he seems to have no trouble with it. Perhaps the milk sensitivity is gone or at least lessening! He's still just drinking water and formula. Liam wasn't showing any progress with or interest in the regular sippy cups, so I thought maybe he would drink from a straw cup. Turns out I was right, so we've bypassed sippy cups and gone straight to the straw cups! Now that he's nine months old, he can eat pretty much anything we eat (except peanut products and honey), so I'm going to start giving him many more different foods. I am still trying to give him only organic food until he's one year old. So far, so good on that! Everything he's had since we switched him to soy formula at one month old has been organic. At nine months old, Liam is still a toothless kid. As far as finger foods go, I've only tried puffs since he has no teeth with which to chew. And up until today he would never feed them to himself. He would open his mouth for me to feed him, and he would pick them up over and over, but, just like with the sippy cups, he never put the two motions together. Never even tried. But he did today! I put some puffs on his tray as I often do, and he played with them at first, then picked a few up, and then to my surprise put one in his mouth! He did it several times and with both hands too. Tonight he fed himself some more puffs and some tiny bites of tofu. So yay, hopefully he will keep this up!

Events: A couple of weeks ago, Liam's grandparents (Will's parents) came to visit. We had a nice time with them and they got to spend good quality time with Liam. Liam thinks his grandpa is the funniest person ever. I had never seen Liam laugh so much and so hard! Last weekend, we went with friends to eat at the new Johnny's Pizza in Addison. It's nice to have something so familiar out here now! It was Liam's first time sitting in a high chair in a restaurant. I know we're a little behind on that, but he's usually sleepy when we go to restaurants, so we just leave him in his carseat. We'll probably put him in a high chair from now on, though. He also loves sitting up in the front of the buggy when we go to Target or Whole Foods. He is such the people watcher, whipping his head back and forth to look at everyone and everything. He doesn't want to miss anything!

Loves to walk!

 These next few were my attempt at his nine month photo shoot. He would not stay put for more than a second. I gave him the card to keep him still, but then he wouldn't really look at me! I got a few, though.

Waiting to see the pediatrician. Dr. Porter had to put his chart on another table because Liam kept going after it. He crawled all over the table. He showed Dr. Porter how busy he is!

People watching at Whole Foods

Liam and His Band...About Halfway There!

Tomorrow, Liam will have had his second DOC Band for six weeks. He's doing great in it, and there are definite improvements. Each time we go for an adjustment, his head has grown a millimeter a week. So since we go every other week, each time I'm told he had 2 mm of growth. So overall, his head has probably grown 6 mm in the new band. I think it only grew 7 or maybe 8 in the total time in the previous band, and we still have 6 or 8 more weeks to go in this one. I honestly wish his head would grow faster, but there's obviously nothing we can do to speed things up there! His head looks so much better, but you can tell there is still more that needs to be done. I'm trying not to think too much on it, but I often wonder if even this second band won't be enough to "fix" his head. Even if it's not perfect (and really, we don't expect it to be perfect-no one has a perfect head), he will not be getting another band.

I am ready to be able to kiss that sweet baby's head all I want (and it not smell like gym socks), but I have to admit it's handy that he has a "crash helmet" at this stage of his life. Liam is fully in the crawling and pulling up and starting to cruise stage. He falls down a lot. Bumps his head sometimes (not hard). So yeah, I think I am much more willing to just let him fall since he has the band on. At the rate he's going, it's possible he might be walking by the time he gets the band off. Maybe not, though. I think he'll definitely get all the steps together before he's year old. Such a determined little dude. He will not be still anymore. Fast too. With the crawling at least. He's still cautious with the cruising. Probably won't be for long, though!

January 28 - stood up in his crib by himself!

Almost bedtime, so his band was getting cleaned.

Crawling after the cats. They have no idea what's in store for them once he can walk and run!

Pulling up and cruising from table to stool!

Standing up is fun!

It's my new favorite thing to do!

And I can do it while watching TV? Score!

Slow Down, Kid!

It hasn't been that long since I wrote the update about Liam at eight months, but he's done even more stuff since then...in just a week and a half!

Let's start with crawling. In the update I mentioned that he only crawls a little bit on his hands and knees and prefers army crawling on his belly. Well, not anymore! Liam is up on his hands and knees for the majority of his crawling now, and army crawling very little. It's cute to see his little booty wiggling. He's now had adventures crawling to the kitchen many times and crawling to the DVD player to mess with it. I couldn't take my eyes off him for more than two seconds, and even by then he'd be messing with something off limits. So, we bought one of those gated playard things. We use the couch as one side of it to give him more room. There's still room to crawl around in it, but now I can go to the bathroom if I need to! He doesn't seem to mind being contained so far, just when he wants one of us to pick him up. This thing takes up most of our small apartment living room. I do feel kind of bad putting him in there sometimes, but we still haven't gotten a gate for the stairs, and they are only a few feet from where he plays. We put up a barricade so he can't get to them, but I think if we hadn't gotten the playard, he would've scaled it in a few days. He was certainly trying to!

Liam has also suddenly gotten pretty good at pulling up on things, or if he's holding on to something short (like his book box), pushing himself to standing. The pushing thing actually happens more often than the pulling up. There's honestly just not a lot of good stuff to pull up on around here. He can't really get a good grip on the couch. He loves to pull/push up on us, and he's even gotten to where, once he's standing, he will let go with one hand. He is learning balance. I really think he wants to be upright! He's good at getting his legs under him and pushing up...getting strong! He had pulled/pushed up before this week, but now he does it almost constantly. If there's nothing to hold onto, he'll just stand with his hands and feet on the floor like the downward dog yoga position, but he's actually been doing that move for awhile.

Last Saturday, we gave Liam a few bites of blueberry muffin I made. It was his first taste of sugar. He liked it, of course! Then literally a few minutes later, I was holding his hands and he was standing up and he started taking steps. That was the first time he had done that! Usually when I try to get him to walk, I have to lift him up a little bit and maneuver his body to take a step. But it finally clicked to take steps forward! So he's been doing that a lot since then. He's on his way to figuring out how to walk! It's so cute, especially when he walks to one of us. That works best, otherwise he sometimes gets distracted by something and stops stepping!

Liam is super attached to me. I know this phase won't last forever, so I'm enjoying it...mostly. One of the sweetest things ever is that last Thursday, he started saying "Mama." At first I just thought he was babbling and was finally doing some M sounds and that's just what came out. Then Will pointed out that he looks right at me when he says it. So he's associating the word with me, too! He's been saying it everyday since then. I love it! He says it over and over and grins at me. One of the downsides of his being attached to me is that I'm pretty sure he can sense when I come to bed (still in the same room, remember?), and a lot of the time, he wakes up and whines/cries and the only thing that makes him stop is laying him in our bed beside me. I'm not totally against cosleeping, but I don't prefer it and it makes me nervous. It was better when he didn't move much when you laid him down, but now he moves a lot. Now I get nervous that he's going to crawl off the bed, because he could totally do that. Also, I have to lay at a weird angle and up on my side facing him with my arm under my head. It's not comfortable. I sleep on my side when he's there to form a barrier between him and the floor. Somehow, this morning (yep, he did it again last night) when we woke up, we were both sideways. I think Liam's feet were probably in Will's face. I want to fast track this whole having Liam in his own room thing. Will and I are actually going to move our bed to the smaller bedroom and leave Liam in our bedroom. Dude has more stuff than us, and the room is actually on the larger side for an apartment bedroom, so it can be his bedroom/playroom. There are a few things we need to get before the transition can happen, oh and we need time to do it, and preferably Liam out of the apartment for awhile. But of course, there's nowhere for him to go. Hopefully this will happen soon. I think we will all sleep better. I love the little guy, though! He obviously loves us too!

I'm under a chair!

Comfortable position?

Guitar booty...pushing up on those legs, though!

Let's get all the books out!

Liam at Eight Months

Eight months. Wow. He really will be a year old before we know it. These next four months before the Big One are doing to be filled with learning lots of new skills and developing at a fast pace. I can't believe it's possible he could be taking his first steps just a few months from now.

But let's not speculate about the future, but instead talk about Liam at his current age. I think I"m going to try a categorized list this time. I've been wanting to do that for months now, but never got around to it.

Stats: Still no official ones until next month (his 9 month appointment is on Valentine's Day). He's a solid baby, and long too. Twenty something pounds and thirty something inches long. Most all of his pants are too short. I recently got him some 12 month size clothes and cozy pj's. The clothes fit well (the pants are long enough), but the pj's are too small. Even though they looked big enough in the store, I'm pretty sure they run small because Carter's brand 9 month pj's still fit him.

Personality: What a fun boy! And busy too. And happy. I love to be around him. He makes my heart happy. He loves to laugh. He loves to babble. He loves to play with his toys. He loves to bounce bounce ( in his jumperoo or really anytime his feet hit the floor). He is determined. If he sees something he wants, he won't stop until he gets it. Of course, if it's something he doesn't need, I stop him. He's usually fine with that but sometimes he gives me a look like, "I can't believe you just did that. I get everything I want!"  He still does well in the nursery at church when he goes on Sunday mornings or events like Mom's Connection or Parent's Night Out. I've never heard anything other than that he behaved perfectly. I'm not bragging; it's the truth! It honestly makes me glad that he doesn't go to daycare. I'd be afraid he wouldn't get paid much attention to since he behaves well. I've worked in daycare. You pay the most attention to those who are demanding it. Loudly. You love the kids who are behaving well, but you don't usually get to spend much time with them. Stranger anxiety has not yet set in. He will still let anyone hold him. I think he's pretty sociable. He enjoys being around people and other babies. He's typically quiet in public, but he gets pretty loud at home with his babbling. He definitely shows more personality at home. He loves to reach out for us now. He cuddles when I put him to bed at night, but during the day he's usually too busy for cuddles.

Skills: He has started doing some new things this past month. He has learned to put himself in a sitting position from lying on the floor. He tried to do that for so long, and he finally did it a couple weeks ago. He does it all the time now. He can get himself up if he's lying on his back or lying on his tummy (or on hands and knees). It's added a whole new dimension to his busyness. As for crawling, he has gotten to where he will crawl on his hands and knees for a few seconds (usually putting each knee and hand forward once or twice), and will then lay down on his tummy and army crawl. Liam has gotten fast with this army crawling and pulling himself where he wants to go! This is where that determination comes in. Determination plus speed equals a very tired mommy from  keeping him from stuff he doesn't need to mess with. I think we finally need to baby proof this place. He is starting to try and pull up on things. He hasn't really been successful yet (thankfully). The only thing he has managed to pull himself up on is me. And I'm there in case he falls! He tries to pull himself up in his crib a little bit, but hasn't managed to do so. However, the other day Will lowered his mattress all the way down. That way we're prepared when he finally does it. The fact that he can sit himself up in his bed made the height of his mattress unsafe. Dude could easily look over the side and reach the rails. He has also started clapping this month. He doesn't do it on command or if I clap first and try to get him to do it, but sometimes when he's playing on his own he just starts clapping. If he's got toys in his hand, then he's banging them together. He's also sort of waving, or at least making the motion. He hasn't associated it with saying hello or goodbye at this point. Liam gets stronger all the time and he has a super strong grip. I've gotten used to having to pry toys, my shirt, and my hair out of it. He is quite grabby these days. One of his new favorite things to do is close the bedroom door. His changing pad is on the floor (always has been-I prefer it that way), so i leave him there to wash my hands after a diaper change. Now he never stays put. He's sitting up and then crawling towards the door and pushing it shut. It happens so quickly too. So busy. He has also started doing a growly sound with his voice. Not really growling like a dog or anything, but making sounds in a growly voice.

Food/Drink: Liam is now getting three meals a day of solid food (assuming everything goes perfectly-some days he only gets two). Here's the list of the foods he's had so far.

He's a good little eater, although easily distracted. Cat walking by? Can't eat. Gotta watch the cat. Wind blowing the trees outside the window? Can't eat. Gotta look out the window. Daddy talking? Can't eat. Gotta turn my head all the way around to look at him. Mealtimes usually take longer than I would like, but he does eat well. So far, it seems like he's not allergic to anything I've given him. He is still on soy formula because when he was a month old we found out he had a milk sensitivity. We attempted milk-based formula again at 3 months and he wasn't ready. We haven't tried again since. It's possible he has outgrown it by now. I'm going to ask his doctor about giving him some dairy products like yogurt or cottage cheese soon and see if he still has issues. It's expensive to try a new formula. Plus we only have four more months of formula anyway. We may just keep him on the soy stuff. Once he's a year old (assuming he's no longer milk sensitive) I plan on giving him both cow's milk and soy milk. So far, the only things Liam drinks are formula and water. I still haven't given him juice to drink, except the occasional ounce of diluted prune juice to keeps things moving along. We're still working on getting him to use a sippy cup. He knows how to hold it by the handles and put it to his mouth, and he knows how to drink from it if I hold it up, but he still hasn't grasped the concept of turning it up himself to get liquid out. I'm sure one day it'll just click for him. He's gotten to where he will hold his bottle up some on his own. Then he lets it fall, so I prop it back up for him. Then he's like, "Oh, you're holding this? Great. Now I don't have to." And he let's go and I"m left holding it. I guess that's smart? Lazy? Oh well. He still doesn't have any teeth, so the only finger food he's had is puffs. He still won't put them in his mouth, but he will eat them if I put them in his mouth. He's quite good at picking them up, though.

Events: The past month, Liam experienced his first Christmas, which was probably a bigger deal for us than him. Earlier this week, Liam and I traveled to Louisiana by ourselves for the first time. I wasn't sure I could handle it, but Liam behaved very well and slept a ton in the (rented) car. We even made it through a poopy fiasco when we were almost home. All I'm saying is that every public restroom should have a baby-changing table, and I'm glad we had rented a hatchbacky car because it came in handy when I had to change his diaper outside! We went back to Louisiana to see my dad who had just gotten out of the hospital and to attend my great-grandmother's funeral. So Liam experienced his first funeral. He behaved really well during it and only made a little bit of noise (including a burp-no manners!). I think Liam being there made people happy, and I'm glad we went even though Will wasn't able to go with us.

In the next few weeks, we hope to transition Liam to sleeping in his own room. Yes, at eight months he's still sleeping in our room, mostly because we never took the time to get his room ready. The easiest way to do this is for Will and I to move our bed to the smaller bedroom and keep Liam where he is and make that his room. He has more stuff than us, plus he's already used to sleeping in there. I think we're going to end up staying in our current apartment even though we desperately want to move. We just really don't have the money to do so. Therefore, we will baby proof the stairs, organize, rearrange, and make this place cute. It's all about being content with what we have, right?

Now for pictures! No more photo shoots in the crib, because it looks like he's in a cage-like this:

See his one dimple?

Reaching for the camera cord.

Silly boy!

One of his pitiful faces

Finally got the cord!

Pardon the food on his face. That's my fault.

Looking at the kitty.

Liam's First Christmas

Christmas is sweeter with a child. For sure. I can only imagine how fun Christmas will be when Liam is old enough to figure out what's going on and we can start some sweet family traditions.

But this year, since Liam is so young, Christmas was as low key as possible. We put up a tiny tree that honestly didn't make it out of the spare bedroom most nights to be put on display. And that was the extent of my Christmas decorating! I'm planning on decorating a lot more (but still not doing too much) next year. We'll just have to figure out a way to keep the cats from eating the tree. By the way, this December our cat Eleanor figured out how to open the door to the spare bedroom where the tree was kept most of the time. So I still had to deal with hairballs with shiny green tinsel in them. Gross. The door to that room is strange, and you just push on it to open it. She learned how to throw her weight into it enough to get it open (no crazy doorknob turning cat tricks here).

My parents came to visit the day after Thanksgiving, and brought Liam his first Christmas present: a Leapfrog activity table! He loved playing with that thing for about a month. Then it started acting up and I took it back. Of course, Target didn't have anymore, so I couldn't get him another one.

At the end of November, FBCR had Baby's First Christmas, which was a sweet little gathering for all the families who had babies celebrating their first Christmas. Liam got to see his church friends, most of which could already crawl then. He could just sit there and look at them go. Poor kid. I think he enjoyed it anyway! Closer to Christmas, we took him to the Richardson library to see the Christmas village and the lights. Unfortunately, he fell asleep on the way there, and just really wasn't happy when we took him out of the warm carseat and woke him up to be in the cold. We didn't stay long!

This year, we didn't get Liam much in the way of presents. Three reasons why: he's a baby and really has everything he needs and doesn't yet know what he wants, money is tight, and I knew he'd get plenty of gifts from other family members. We got him a new board book that's personalized with his name and picture in it, and we got him some teething rings. He loves to chew on them! That was it from us.

Christmas Eve, we packed up and headed to Louisiana to celebrate Christmas with family. Liam was a good little traveler and did well in the car. We had Christmas that evening with my family. As predicted, Liam got the most presents! He got all kinds of toys, some clothes, the movie "Dumbo" and a Fisher Price sing-along CD. His favorite was the sock monkey from his Aunt Melissa and Uncle Tony. We call him Socky. I think he enjoyed opening presents, but he had refused to nap that afternoon, and I could tell he was very tired. He didn't smile much but was very well-behaved.

The next day, we went to visit my great-grandmother, Liam's great-great-grandmother. We had a really nice visit with her and she held Liam some. He's quite squirmy these days and hard to hold on to. I'm very thankful for that visit because she passed away last night. It's sad that Liam will not remember her at all, but he's blessed to have had a great-great-grandparent for a little while at least. Most don't get that privilege.

After that visit, we went to the parents' house of my friend Amanda for JAAG Christmas. Liam got to meet his AAG aunties for the first time! JAAG stands for Jennifer, Amy, Amanda, and Glenda, and we started calling ourselves that our freshman year of high school (just easier than saying all of our names). It stuck, and people still refer to us as JAAG. This was our 17th annual JAAG Christmas, the first one being in 1995. Amanda and Ian got Liam some new All-Stars for him to grow into. Amanda's mom played with him a bunch. Everyone loves Liam!

The next morning, on our way back to Dallas, we stopped by Glenda's parents' house so they could meet Liam. We had a fun time visiting. Liam was very quiet at first, but opened up a little after awhile. At least he was well-behaved.

That was Liam's first Christmas! Now for pictures:

Liam and His Band...The Encore So Far

In preparation for Liam's second band, we're going through the process just like we did with the first one. He had an evaluation as if he had never had a band before. Next came the DSi scan. That was done Wednesday, December 14th. And once again, just like last time, I didn't take any pictures. So I still don't have a picture of him with the stocking over his face smushing it. It still didn't bother him. It only took two people to get the pictures done this time as opposed to three. Liam is a pro now and they only had to take three shots to get a good one.

After a three week break from wearing a band, he got his second one on December 28th. We didn't have nearly as many skin issues the first week like last time, so he got to start wearing it full time pretty quickly. It also doesn't seem to bother him to have it on this time either. We're back in the routine of cleaning the band and his head each night.

Yesterday (January 4th), he had his first adjustment appointment in the new band. His head had grown a millimeter and there was already progress on the back of his head! In just the first week! That's huge because with the first one, it was 3 or 4 weeks before we saw any growth or progress. He is now on a two week adjustment schedule, so we only have to go every other week.

This band was made to last 12-14 weeks. Hopefully he won't have to go that long, but it'll be ok if he does as long as his head improves to where it needs to be. He's not getting another band. This is it, so we have to make it count!

Pictures from his first day with the new band: