10 months

So, as I type right now, Alex is trying desperately to grab the container of nuts on the china cabinet behind me.  Needless to say, things around our house have changed a little bit since my last blog post, two months ago.  I know I had originally said that we were going to change to a more bi-weekly or even monthly update, but this seems to have gone a bit beyond that.

Since my last post, Alex has started crawling.  In fact, he's going quite a bit beyond crawling to pulling up on the furniture and even moving around it a bit.  He's also discovered stairs.  He thinks they're great fun to climb on and up.  The result of that one is that the gates we put at the tops of the stairs to keep him from bouncing down them aren't sufficient.  Instead, we're going to have to start looking for ones appropriate for the bottoms too.  In the meantime, I guess we can continue to put furniture and boxes in front of them or just keep running for him as he tries to ascend.

He's still a healthy and happy little(-ish) boy.  At his last checkup he was 27 pounds and 31 inches long.  That's 95th percentile if you're curious.  However, even with him being that big, as he's started crawling and moving around more, some of his baby fat-based chubbiness has gone away.  He's not really gained any more weight than before, but instead looks like someone's stretching him.  He's also not looking any more like me than before, in fact he keeps looking more like mommy (as this post shows).

That being said, we think he's gotten more of my personality.  He can be a rather intense and focused little one, when he wants.  But at the same time, he seems to have a goofy sense of humor (though I think a lot of babies and toddlers have that).  He also loves buttons and knobs and blinking lights.  My parents always tell this story about me as a little one: when they needed a break, they would just put me in the playpen right in front of the stereo.  I would then proceed to spend a good amount of time playing with and turning the knobs.  I suspect Alex would do the same thing.  He definitely likes the stereo we have.  Oh and he's figured out how to turn on and off the clock radio we have in the basement.  I really like the video Feli posted of Alex ignoring his toys while going for the remote control on the table.

He's still sleeping through the night, which is very nice.  He tends to head to bed around 6-8, give or take, and then will sleep to 6 or 7 AM.  After that, his schedule is a bit more squishy.  He's still taking about three naps per day, one an hour or so after he gets up, one mid morning and one mid afternoon.  Of course, that tends to change a bit from day to day.  In fact this morning, we have no early morning nap and are hoping to hold off for the 10am nap.

Feeding time is definitely becoming more interested.  He's started to feed himself and sometimes won't eat unless it's that way.  He still seems to eat just about anything Feli and I feed him, which tends to make mommy very happy.  However, he definitely loved to eat fruits and cheese.  And of course he likes to chew on the occasional stick as well.  Yesterday, he and I were walking around the city after having played at the local playground.  When we got home, mommy found that he'd been chewing on a stick the entire time.  I guess he got his minerals that way.

Through it all, he's still remained the easy to handle, happy little guy that we've grown to love.  It's been a fun 10 months watching him grow and mature and flourish.  We're definitely thankful for him and couldn't ask for a better fit for our small, but growing family.