Jonah: 10 Month Update

Weight: 21 lbs 8 oz

Height 29 inches

Milestones:

-Waving “hi” and “bye”

-Climbing stairs

-Creeping along furniture while standing

-Strategic “falling” to his bottom

-Crawling ALL OVER THE PLACE

-9 teeth, total (including one molar!)

-First haircut (thanks Omi!)

Personality:

For the first few months of his life, Jonah was a pretty fussy baby.  It was probably his gaseous belly that was bothering him, but to be honest, I worried that he was just a crabby baby.  This worry has been put to rest these past few months because my goodness, Jonah is such a happy, playful, silly baby!  When he spots you from a distance, he grins a big wide smile, squeals and almost lifts off the ground he flaps his arms so violently.  He’s also very active, crawling all over the house, climbing stairs, and pulling up on bookshelves and bathtubs and fireplaces. I guess it’s officially time to baby proof, huh?  The past month he’s been especially vocal, trying out all sorts of new sounds and having conversations with just about anything or anyone: books, strangers, friends, cars. We’ve heard the baby-babble versions of “God”, “dog”, “car”, “duck” and “good”.   And while sometimes he’ll bashfully duck into our shoulder around a new face, usually he warms up to strangers pretty quickly.  We’ve also noticed an increased interest in other children and babies recently.  He still sticks most things in his mouth, but now he’ll politely offer us a taste too.  No thanks, bud.  I’d rather not suck on a slobbery sock.   

Likes:

-Books: Jonah has turned into quite the bibliophile. He loves reading books in our lap and still enjoys turning the pages. But lately he’s also taken to standing up at our bookshelves and yanking everything from Dave Eggers, to The Homebrewing Handbook onto the ground for him to leaf through.

-Being spun, hung upside down, tossed in the air, or otherwise man-handled

-Being outside, especially on the front porch swing

-Talking to cars as they drive by

Dislikes:

-Having his face wiped

-The vacuum cleaner

-Having clothes put on or taken off him

-Being intercepted from tumbling down the kitchen stairs

Jonah's wrists: Where arm chub meets hand chub.

Perusing his library. Just like in Beauty and the Beast.

Car-gazing.

Church.

Stair climbing.

Taking some much-needed alone-time in the stroller. 

Swinging at the park. 

Playing with one of his favorite toys: a dad-designed Kaotix RC car. 

Jonah: 9 Month Update

Weight: 21 lbs 4 oz (74%)

Length: 29 inches (72%)

Clothes Size: It's time to call it. He's officially in 12 mo clothes now. 

Milestones:

-Crawling (sometimes a real crawl but usually an army crawl)

-Maneuvering from sitting to tummy and back up to sitting

-Putting toys away (dropping items back into their storage container)

-Giving high-fives

Crawling toward the camera. 

Food:

Jonah continues to love mealtime each day.   His current favorite foods include: blueberries, whole grain waffles, veggie burger patties, white beans, plain full-fat Greek yogurt, baked fish and cheese (Havarti and Colby Jack).   Plus frequent gulps of water from his sippy cup. When we’re out and about we rely pretty exclusively on the Plum Organics baby food pouches, which I bought in bulk on Amazon for about $1.25 per pouch.  They come in combinations like "Kale, Strawberry, Greek Yogurt and Amaranth".  Really? Amaranth?  I don't even know what that is.  But Jonah loves them. He can seriously down one of these pouches in about 3 minutes.  No joke. This kid’s serious about his amaranth.

Blueberries and white beans.

My little kitchen helper.

Health:

Well, we finally encountered our first illness episode. I’m surprised we made it this long, honestly.   Jonah had had a mild runny nose for a couple weeks, but nothing that interfered with his mood or sleep.  But a couple days ago his temperature spiked to 102.5* and he was really fussy so we took him to the doctor.  Turns out, it was nothing more than a random virus.  His fever was well-controlled by ibuprofen and we continued to use saline drops and a humidifier to ease any congestion. What a trooper, though.  Even at his sickest, this sweet boy babbled and smiled and charmed every nurse and doctor in the place. 

The Foot Book, indeed.

Favorite Activities:

(1) Using Mom and Dad as scaffolding for climbing and exploring: Jonah will often crawl towards us with excitement, but as soon as he reaches us, he’ll climb up and look past us, or twist around and look back at where he came from.  Always looking for greener pastures, this guy.  Or, looking for something better to shove in his mouth, more accurately. 

(2) Reading: We’ve finally made it to a point where Jonah will focus on a book without trying to chew on it!  His (our) favorites: “Night Night, Little Pookie”, “I Love You as Big as the World”, “Little You”, “The LMNO Peas” and Dr. Seuss.

(3) Tickles from Brown Bear during diaper changes: We now have to strategically position toys for Jonah to play with during diaper changes, lest we wrestle his wriggly little body right off the changing pad.  Brown Bear is a current favorite. Jonah squeals with delight when he makes an appearance, and then promptly gnaws on his face straight up bath-salts style. 

(4) Hugs from Big Bear: Somehow this enormous fuzzy companion made it home with us from Baltimore last month stuffed into a medium sized duffle bag.  And good thing he did, because he is one of Jonah’s absolute favorite toys.  Big Bear is great for climbing, hugging, wiping drool and, of course, laying on in the early morning when your son wants to play at 5:30am and you still want to sleep. 
(5) Wrestling and Rolling-Around with Dad: All of Jake's daddy-dreams have come true: he has a son that loves to wrestle. Well, "wrestle".  Jake will hold him and roll around on the floor blowing raspberries on his neck and Jonah giggles and squeals like it's the best thing ever.  Which, of course, it is. 

Playing with Big Bear.

Blocks!

Bedtime reading with Daddy.

Things I Want to Remember:

Touring the MRH ECC: This month Jonah and I got to visit his future school, the Maplewood-Richmond Heights Early Childhood Center.  We are part of the MRH Parents-As-Teachers program and were invited to come for a screening and a “campus tour”. For the screening, Jonah played on the floor while the PAT teacher and I talked and she observed his development.  As we suspected (but of course were reassured to hear from an expert), Jonah is perfectly on track developmentally and even ahead of the game in certain aspects.  It’s funny how proud I was of even the smallest “achievements”.  Teacher: “I see he’s moving toys from one hand to the other.” Me: “I know. Isn’t it amazing?”  

Then she walked us around the campus and explained the school’s teaching philosophy and some of its innovative programs.   It was so exciting to experience first hand some of the newest ideas in education.  The curriculum is similar to the Reggio Emilia philosophy, where school is seen as a “studio” and instruction is inquiry based and child-directed.  Even the physical space of the school was refreshing: light, open, exploratory and largely created by the students themselves.  Its no wonder the school has won so many awards.  I can’t wait to send Jonah here in a couple years!

Hanging with his newest bedtime friend, Floppsy Bunny.

Standing in his crib. Time to drop the mattress down.

A trip to the zoo on an unusual 60* January Sunday!

Yak attack!

Looking up from inside his stroller. 

Jonah: 8 Month Update

Stats:

Weight: 21 lbs (80%)

Length: 28 inches (55%)

Clothes: 9 months (but barely!)

Milestones:

-Pincer grasp: This skill was motivated primarily by his desire to get yogurt melts off his high chair tray and into his hungry little mouth.

-Pulling up to stand: He does this mainly using our hands as stabilization, but every now and then we see him pull to stand on coffee tables and other furniture.

-Standing unassisted:  By unassisted, we mean without mom or dad helping him balance, but while holding onto a piece of furniture to steady himself. 

-Object permanence: One of Jonah’s new favorite toys is a set of colorful stacking bowls and a small ball that rattles.  To practice learning object permanence, Jake will put the small ball under one of three bowls and then rearranges the bowls while Jonah watches and then Jonah guesses where the ball is.  He’s becoming really good at finding the ball, which is just amazing to watch. 

Mobility:

Jonah’s not quite crawling yet, but you can see on his face how badly he wants to move.  His central means of locomotion these days is scooting in circles on his belly, kind of like a dog chasing its tail. 

For now, we’re pretty content with a baby that stays (mostly) where we leave him.

Brown bear, holding on for dear life. 

Food:

While we’re still doing mainly purees and mashed foods, Jonah’s eating more and more table foods as well.  During meal times I’ll give him small pieces of whatever we’re eating (as long as it’s fairly healthy) and he gobbles it all right up.  Favorites at the moment are: baked white fish, scrambled egg yolk with cheese, steamed apples and pears with cinnamon and roasted veggies.    Also, he can pretty much eat his weight in those Gerber puff snacks.  Which, as other parents know, is quite a feat given how ridiculously light those things are!  We also finally found a sippy cup that he likes—the kind with a straw.   Who woulda guessed?

Scrambled egg-yolks with cheese. 

Sippy-cup success!

Sleep:

Hallelujah!  We’ve had about a month of delightfully sound and regular sleep. Most nights Jonah sleeps straight through, from 7:15pm-6:30/7:00am.  This, my friends, has been life changing.   There’s nothing quite like a full night of uninterrupted sleep to make everything a little brighter, a little sweeter and a little easier.  Although, as a friendly reminder to not get too comfortable, Jonah just started (what we think is) his 8-month sleep regression.  Last week naps were shorter with a good deal of crying and last night we had the first extended night waking in quite a while.   We’ll see where this one takes us…

Favorite Activities:

Being tossed in the air by dad.

Playing peek-a-boo with mom.

Being outside.

Baths in his inflatable ducky tub.

Always a few good outtakes in the bunch. 

Yup. He makes a good pout.