From month 10 to month 11 I believe a corner was turned and David went from baby to toddler. It was a bittersweet moment when I realized that. I'm so proud of all he has learned to do and how far he has come, in just the last month! But...part of me will always miss my little baby boy!
David learned to crawl officially (more than just one step here or there) one week after his 10-month birthday! And once that happened, he took off and never looked back! He also started pulling himself up on edges of couches and chairs and coffee tables and a couple weeks later was walking across the sides of the furniture while holding on! Caleb and I were shocked! After months of not much mobility, all of the sudden we had a kid who was practically ready for his first marathon! :) Also, this month, David has gotten much more verbal. He says "dada" now (it took him a few months to learn the "d" sound...his first official word was "mama" at around 8 months and I'm pretty proud of that fact!). But once David learned dada, he didn't stop there. He has been jibber jabbering all month long, experimenting with all sorts of new sounds! G sounds, S sounds, Z sounds, Th sounds....his babbling really sounds like words sometimes! And he really does appear to be trying to communicate more now than ever before! Like, if we ask him a question, he looks at us and "answers". Or he'll babble something to us and then stop and stare at us, as if he's waiting for us to respond to what he just said! It's so adorable! So between the verbal advancements and the mobile advancements, our little guy has changed by leaps and bounds this month!
One of the cute things he's started doing recently is kissing children's pictures in the books we read! Like in our Bible ABC's book that we read every morning, there are certain children (in pictures on certain pages) that ALWAYS get a kiss (or two or three) from David each day as we read the verse on that page! I always say something like, "Aw, David, you're so sweet! Are you giving her/him a kiss?" and he usually gives a big smile and does it again :)
David is eating all kinds of real food now (he much prefers feeding himself real food over mom spooning baby food in his mouth!). He loves Mac 'n' Cheese, green beans, rice, bananas, cheerios, crackers, goldfish... I haven't totally let him eat just anything we are eating...but on a few special occasions, I've let him have some real food and he's just loving it! Once he's a year old, we'll start letting him dive into whatever we're eating, and he will probably be thrilled! He still nurses 4 times a day and both he and I LOVE those times! I'm not sure I ever want it to end :) I'm definitely not in a rush to wean him!
He is cutting his first molar ALREADY...we were pretty shocked to find that out! It's been pretty rough and painful for him, but I'm happy to get it over with earlier rather than later!
Since we've been home and David's been mobile, there have been a lot of "no no"'s and "don't touch!"'s and "David, obey!"'s!! Entering this new phase of parenting has been interesting, a stretching, learning experience for sure...but very rewarding as we see him respond to our commands and obey! He seems to have a pretty tender heart, and usually with one "no no" he stops what he was touching or doing wrong and goes to find something else to do. We always make sure to get really excited and praise his obedience!
Here are a few photos I got of David just in our living room at home. Since this was the first photo shoot I've done with him since he's gotten mobile, it was busy and slightly stressful! Especially when I sat him on the sofa...he kept wanting to take a nosedive off the edge :-/ So I had to get his attention, get him to smile, take the photo AND catch him each time he took a leap! Fun stuff :) Managed to catch a few decent shots though...
