10 months old!

Miles turned 10 months old on January 18th, and the tardiness of this post is indicative of how busy life is with a fast-crawling, cruising, into-everything baby.  Miles definitely keeps us on our toes, and continues to be an active, happy kid.

 Pictures of a baby laying on a quilt are no longer possible.

At 10 months, his goals include:  opening and closing all the doors in our house, laying in the dog beds, eating pieces of leaves that get tracked inside, getting his hands on the laptop cords, chewing on our tabletops, and playing in the dog's water.  It's very upsetting to him that most of these activities are not allowed. 

 Mean Mama never lets him eat leaves.

Miles continues to be very mobile - he crawls really fast, pulls up on everything (even our legs and Maggie) and has accidentally stood on his own for a few seconds.  Right now he's getting better at cruising around the furniture, and loves pushing his dinosaur walker or my stepstool (pictured above).  I'm not in a rush for him to walk and wreak more havoc on our house, but I'm proud of him, and think he'll figure it out soon.

Unfortunately, the past two weeks have been pretty rough since Miles got sick and ran fever for the first time.  He had an ear infection in his right ear, and after removing an astonishing amount of impacted wax, started a course of amoxicillin.  Things went downhill from there, as it turns out he is allergic to it (and likely penicillin) and developed tummy issues and a crazy red rash.  Now he's on a new medicine and the ear is healed, but he spent 3 days at home this week due to some sort of virus that caused him to run fever from 99 - 103.8 degrees.  Thankfully, he seems to be over it and has been fever free since yesterday afternoon, but we were sad to miss his buddy John's birthday party.

Feeling better on Jan 30th

Things have gotten a bit difficult on the food front lately, since Miles had to be on a pretty starchy diet while on the antibiotics and a lot of our staple foods are off limits until his tummy is back to normal.  He's very moody at mealtime, and has started throwing food and wants to feed himself but gets frustrated when it doesn't go well.  He still prefers to try what we're eating (except bread - I think the texture confuses him) and drink from his straw cup. 

Penne pasta with ground turkey sauce was a hit (pre-illness)

This month also brought work trips for both me and Nick, so it's been a bit more hectic than usual.  I am always grateful that Nick and I are equal partners in childcare, but I really appreciate him when he's away and I'm trying to make food, bathe Miles, feed myself, and play during the evening.  Thankfully, Miles' best friend Maggie is here to help out... and eat the food he rejects.  (Now she has to go outside or to her bed during dinner because we don't want this to be a trend)

 Thanks for my awesome hat, Aunt Carly!

A recent achievement/challenge for Miles has been learning to put himself to sleep.  Bedtime had gone from an easy ten minutes, to a thirty minute affair full of whining.  We have finally started routinely putting Miles in his crib awake and now he's pretty good about going to sleep on his own after a few minutes of flopping around his bed.  He still goes to bed a little later than most babies (8:30) but sleeps all night until 7:30 most mornings and sometimes even later if we let him.  It isn't typical, but it works for us, and gives us time together in the evenings after work so we're happy.  Unfortunately, he remains a crappy daycare napper, and sometimes comes home having only slept for 45 minutes all day.  Hopefully he outgrows this phase soon.

Another fun change is that Miles really plays with his toys now instead of just watching us with them or exploring the textures.  He figured out how to send balls down his corkscrew slide toy (a favorite) and likes to spin the beads and other movable pieces on his Zany Zoo cube.  He also crawls around pushing his little cars, and throws balls so he can chase them (basically playing fetch with himself).

We're looking forward to Miles' first birthday, and will be having his party on Saturday the 21st at our house.  Save the date!