10 months old!!

My baby boy turned 10 months old yesterday!! And I don't have a camera that works right now!!! I can't tell you how frustrating that is. I'm taking it to wolf camera today! If they can't fix it, I might buy a new one on Amazon TODAY.

He is oh so very cute, and very happy, and an almost constant joy. He has recently started eating three meals of fruits or veggies a day instead of 2. He has become less and less interested in nursing, but still does nurse. At this point, I hope he doesn't wean himself before he turns 1. That way I neither have to buy formula nor endure anyone's wrath when I feed him cow's milk before age one. He is crawling all over the place and cruising just a little. He isn't climbing yet, but you can see him thinking about it. He has radar for things he shouldn't have and zooms right to them. We have, at times, 4 baby gates up to keep him away from the stairs, out of the kitchen, away from the catfood, and so forth. We have nearly damaged ourselves stepping over these on many occasions.

I haven't weighed him, but he was recently 19 pounds and hasn't outgrown much since then. He's getting tall and is still pleasantly plump. He still has dimples on his hands for his knuckles. His cheeks are pinchably puffy and sometimes we just call him Cheeks. His hair is mostly blond, but in the sunlight seems red. He has a cow lick at the perfect place on the back of his head. Lately his hair sticks up constantly unless I have just wetted it and smoothed it. Think Denise the Menace. Sometimes it looks like one of those weird halos on really old paintings where they've got a plate hovering over Jesus' head.

He is in 9 month size sleepers, but still 6 month size onesies.

Recently, I gave him a whole deck of playing cards to bend and mutilate any way he liked. He loves making a mess with them. But he played with one for about 2 whole minutes before he looked around the room and decided to try to slot one into the air conditioner intake. Really pretty smart! And a no-no, of course.

He understands no! At least for right now. He'll reach for the phone cord for the phone we keep on a tippy (yet lightweight) stand. We say no, and he pulls his hand back. He tries again, and we say "no, we are still watching you". He then affects this bored and not interested air while not moving away from the cord. He plays with other things for a minute, then tries for the phone cord again. "NO!" He gives us this look like, "oh fine, have it your way" and finally crawls off to something else. Or we pick him up and bodily move him to something else.

Last night, for the third night in a row, he gave us signals at 8:30 that he wanted to go to bed. Normally we put him to bed at 9. We have now moved his bedtime to 8:30. He leaned waaaaay back in our arms, meaning "I wanna lay down". I put him in his preferred sleeper and he clapped. I took him over to the rocking chair to rock a bit. He pushed back to look at me, and cried a bit. "You want to just go to bed?" Immediately he stopped crying. "Well, ok." I put him down in the crib, put his fuzzy blanket where he can reach it, and he smiles at me and kicks his feet in joy. "Alrighty then! Goodnight son." No crying when I leave and we only hear one brief peep out of him ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT!!! He wasn't even awake when I left at 7am.

He says Mama and clearly means me. He can put an amazing amount of conversational inflection into saying "Ga!" over and over. You can almost tell what he means. His babbling of "bottle bottle ba!" Does not necessarily mean that he's thirsty for anything.

Next week, Hubby will be keeping him at home instead of daycare. Daycare is closed for a week's worth of vacation. This seems a little daunting to even me. Five days straight of doing it by yourself. The other night, Hubby asked me when the last time I did a week by myself. Umm... before I returned to work? See! It's been a while for you too! Oh wait, I say, we had him for 8 days straight in Myrtle Beach! Oh yeah! We both relax a bit. Ok, so we can do this. Of course, at Myrtle Beach, there was a grandmother, and aunt and a cousin to help entertain, get him in and out of his swimsuit, and a wide variety of unusual activities.

One of the things Quint has a daycare that we don't have, is an almost endless supply of buckets of toys. Every day, when I pick him up, he's into something else. There are bigger kid toys like wooden puzzles that aren't specifically for him, but he enjoys playing with the pieces and gnawing on them. There's a bucket of magnetic letters to play with. And so on.

Perhaps this week is a great time for us to have some new home options available. Like the entire tupperware shelf in the kitchen. Orrrrr maybe I should spend some of my Kohl's cash on some kind of bucket of wooden toys. Or maybe I should follow these signs that say "Huge Estate Sale - open at 7am Friday" since it is 7:07am on Friday. Now I've never seen an estate sale with lots of toys, but this one did. I'm not a big fan of the tons of Pooh things, but I was a big fan of the large basket of toddler size Legos - not the tiny chokable ones. This even has some cool pieces like house windows and a bridge and other house parts. I was also a big fan of the doctor play set that came in it's own doctor's bag. And the set of small blue steps that will get a kid closer to the bathroom faucet (needs some cleaning up). And a clock (couldn't resist). And a purse identical to mine. All for $10!

In the spirit of getting rid of things at home, I thought I controlled myself well at this estate sale. I left several things there that I do not have an immediate need for. Several useful looking shelves, bins, and plastic drawers. I left the huge, deluxe ice scrapper since we have at least 4 cheap ones right now. I left all three bolt into the wall shelves that I could mentally place around the house that would then collect stuff because of our horizontal plane syndrome. I left the circular saw and the power sander. And the whole drilling bits. For the saw, sander, and drill bits, I have only thought they would be handy about 3 times each since we bought our house 8 years ago. I do not need these. I left the swiffer mop. I left the lamp.

So I bought things that I was thinking about buying elsewhere (toys). I bought only one thing that we probably won't need for a year (steps). I caved on one neurotic habit (clocks). And only bought one silly thing (purse just like mine).