Eleven Months

Alex is now eleven months old. He is still a smiley, happy baby for the most part. Therapy is going well and each week he has a new emerging skill--although he is still not quite ready to sit up on his own. He does roll over very well and pushes up, but he can't quite figure out how to crawl--instead he just gets mad and starts screaming at you. We have begun introducing bits of solid food--so far he has tried baby Cheetos (Gerber approved), wagon wheels, and puffs. He does fairly well with these and is grasping them better each day, which is helping develop those fine motor skills. We have also given him bits of cheese and yogurt here lately in hopes that we can transition to milk-products at one year of age. Due to his weight issues, we have increase the amount of formula he gets (more powder in less water for a thicker, more concentrated calorie packed meal) and he gulps it up--particularly in the morning...in the afternoon he mostly plays with his bottle. He is back on the Prevacid for his acid reflux.

He is still making lots of strides in the "talking" department--he says "mama" and "dada", but still without real purpose. He also says "baba" which we take to mean bottle, and he has begun squealing and grunting at you a lot. He also makes "ta" sounds frequently.

His favorite things are eating food, playing with Lucas or daddy, and sucking on his finger/paci when he is getting sleepy.

We are still in the cranial helmet and were told probably one more month and we could call it quits with that. His head has grown an amazing amount and you almost can't even tell where the flat spot was anymore. Most weekends we take the helmet off and he just uses it during sleep time.

He is wearing 9-12 month clothes for the most part, although I have begun buying 18 month outfits for summer and he is long enough that they work pretty well.

I can't believe he will be a year old in another month. For the most part, it seems like we still have a small baby, since he is really still at a six month developmental level. At this point Lucas was walking and talking, so I have no other basis to compare it to, but I guess every child is different and he will begin doing all those things some day soon. I'm not really ready for him to be mobile yet, anyway, so maybe it was a blessing in a way!