William at 11 Months

 As of this morning, William now weighs 20.5lbs, has a head circumference of 18", and is 30 1/4" long.

Starting about two weeks ago, he started going through a growth spurt. Its been a while since the last one, and I had kind of forgotten how voracious he is when they happen. He went from eating 3oz of solids at every meal, and a 5oz bed time bottle, to 5-6oz of solids at every meal and a 10oz bed time bottle. In addition, he started getting up one or two times a night and would drink an additional 6-8oz each time. Some nights he was going through 20oz of milk! I can only pump 10oz a day, so needless to say, he was eating me out of house and home! Luckily my lactation consultant told me that I could start mixing cow's milk with breast milk for the night time bottles. I did that and it worked! I just had to sweeten it a little so that he would drink it.

 A few friends have told me that crawling and walking resulted in their babies suddenly not sleeping as well. Apparently the babies didn't want to sleep in lieu of practicing their new found skills. This wasn't exactly the case with Will. His naps didn't change at all (two naps between 1-2 hours each), but he did start waking in the night more, as well as start waking up earlier (5:45 instead of 7:30-8). As previously mentioned, this started out being because of his growth spurt, but after the growth spurt was over, he continued to adhere to this new (and rather inconvenient and yawn-inducing) schedule. It didn't help that he could now stand up in his crib and cry. So we had to revisit our sleep training days. I was rocking him to sleep during this time. Initially this rocking started out as me simply calming him down, then putting him to bed awake, but drowsy. As time went on though, he needed more and more rocking, until I found myself up at 3 am, rocking him for 30-40 minutes until he fell asleep. That method was no longer sustainable for me and I decided sleep re-training was in order. No more rocking for William! Luckily all it took was a night or two of letting him cry a bit (no more than 5 minutes), and he was back to sleeping through the night, and waking up at 7:30-8am. Thank goodness! They aren't kidding when they say that growth spurts can be disruptive. I am still catching up on sleep from those two weeks!

Along with this growth spurt, he has had a developmental spurt. Suddenly he went from slow army crawling, to fast, proper crawling on his hands and knees. A few days later he learned to sit up on his own, and the next day he pulled up for the first time. He was already starting to cruise between toys and furniture, but being able to crawl and pull himself up made him unstoppable. He soon learned how to get down from standing, and began cruising along the wall. He can now hold himself up, one handed and has even stood unassisted for a second here and there.

His sudden improvement in his physical abilities has just astounded me! He wants to get into everything and if I don't put baby gates up, I find him eating handfuls of dirt, pulling toilet paper off the rolls, and licking shoes! Hes also learned how to open all of the kitchen cabinets and enjoys removing their contents. I have to watch him constantly! This works out well as he is also having some separation anxiety and hates for me to leave the room for even a moment. His favorite thing is to climb all over me like a human jungle gym. He will also play for a little bit, come over to me to get some reassurance, then go back to playing. Apparently this is called "emotional recharging" or something like that, and is a normal part of development. It sure does make it hard to make dinner and go to the bathroom alone though!

He has also made strides in his mental and verbal development. He is babbling more with new and different sounds including dada and mama. The other day, Will was saying "Dada" a bunch and when Michael got home, I excitedly told him about it. He then asked Will to say "Dad" and he did! Another example is when its time to change his clothes. He knows that we are dressing him. I usually hand him a  toy to keep him from rolling, and he holds it with both hands. When I tug on one of his arms so that i can put it through a shirt sleeve, he will let go of the toy with that hand, then once the arm is through the sleeve, he will grab the toy again and let go with the other hand so that arm can also go through a sleeve.

One more change that I am less than thrilled about, is William becoming a bit more picky about food. I make a lot of his baby purees and until now, he has eaten them no problem. Now he will often refuse to eat even a single bite until I bring out the ready-made jarred food. I have tried making him wait to eat until he is really hungry, in hopes that he will give in and eat my food, but he is pretty stubborn, and once hes decided that hes not going to eat something, he won't eat it. He just cries that hes hungry with a bowl of food sitting in front of him. Silly kid! Luckily I can often trick him by serving my food, in some old baby food jars. I can't imagine that this trick will last for too long, but I will milk it for as long as I can. Hopefully soon we can start replacing more and more of his meals with actual pieces of real food, not purees.

So many things have changed this month, that its funny to look back and remember that I was a bit worried about William's development a few months ago. It turns out he was right on target, just not ahead of the curve. Its hard to look at everyone else's baby and see how advanced they are, then look at your own kid who hasn't made progress in months! Thankfully this was Will's month to blossom and he has finally caught up with everyone in his age group. Its definitely been an adjustment for me, learning to put the baby gates up every day, and watching him like a hawk. Its not as easy as when I could just leave him in one spot and he'd still be there when I returned. William has wanted to be on the go for a long time now though, so I think he is a lot happier with his increased mobility. I think he might actually be walking in the next couple of months, and then we are really in trouble, because this kid is a grade A stinker! He is everything that I was nervous about when I found out that we were having a boy, but I couldn't love him more. I am one lucky mama!