Bruce's Blog: Bruce is 9 months old!

Bruce is 9 months old!
What a cute little reindeer

Well, it's been an interesting month. This one felt longer somehow ;) Bruce continues to grow bigger each day and is always getting into something (hence the transformation of our living room into a prison yard).

Movement: Bruce continues to be very active. He can crawl very quickly across the room, occasionally distracted by his toys, but always finding his way to Mama and Dada on the couch. One night, he even crawled from one side of the room to the other, when Deanna said 'come to Mama.' He is also starting to walk by himself while holding onto his gates and the couches. He can very easily pull himself up to standing position and has also now figured out how to sit back down gracefully.

Oral: Vocal development is pretty much the same. Bruce continues to babble, particularly when he is sleepy. He has a not so nice scream when he gets bored, that we are trying to put the kibosh on. He likes to amuse himself by playing with his lips and making a funny noise.

Lots more teeth to show off. Bruce now has 4 fully emerged teeth on the bottom, and just this week has cut through 3 teeth on the top. Needless to say, it's been a long, painful week for all 3 of us (short naps, fussy eating, and generally just not happy about anything).

Eating: Bruce's feeding schedule is weighed more heavily on solids now, and he seems to prefer finger foods to his baby food, but mainly still getting baby food. His schedule consists of a whole container of fruit with oatmeal for breakfast (stage 2), a whole container of veggies for lunch (stage 2-3), and various baby food meat/veggie combinations for dinner. He also continues to get about 30 oz of formula each day. His new finger foods include egg yolk, sharp cheddar cheese, turkey, pasta, peach yogurt, apple cinnamon puffs, sweet potato puffs, and banana puffs. He also has tried a few new baby food combinations: banana yogurt, turkey/sweet potato and spaghetti (which he was not so fond of). It's gotten a little tougher to feed Bruce his solids some days, and we can already sense the behavioral testing starting. He occasionally will purse his lips and he likes to look at everything around him except the person trying to feed him. There's also been some arm and leg flailing that has resulted in flying baby food. Usually, he eventually eats it all, but it's a bit more trying these days. We've learned that making him laugh or cry helps the process (whatever it takes to get that mouth open).

Sleeping and General Health: We've still been pretty lucky in this department. Bruce tends to go down for bed around 9PM and gets up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. He occasionally wakes up during the night, but usually can soothe himself back to sleep. Bruce has still managed to avoid his first cold. He is now fully vaccinated for the swine flu and regular seasonal flu. He has his 9-month check up tomorrow, so stay tuned for the results there.

Here are some photos from the past month to share. (We got behind on a few family visits and holiday moments, but hope to catch up soon)

Bruce in his high chair