Myles Monthly: 9

As you may know, I didn't decide to start my blog until my son Myles was about 8 months old. And well... now he is 19 months old! So I am focusing on getting caught up with monthly updates and monthly favorites, so I can get, and hopefully stay, up to date with current times. 

  April 15th- May 14th, 2013

Statistics

Born: 7 lbs 6 oz and 19.5 inches
Nine Months: 19 lbs 13 oz and 29 inches

  Health

After all the craziness of last month, this month was a welcomed relief in the health department. Everything went really well at our 9 month well-check and we finally didn't need to get any shots! Super WIN in my book! Still rocking just the two middle bottom teeth, but it was obvious more were definitely coming by the way he was steady chewing on everything. The weather was finally nice enough to get outside and after a super long winter that kept us stuck inside 90% of the time, we took the opportunity to spent a copious amount of time exploring the new outdoors. Myles finally got some sunshine this month and he loved every second of it, as did I. 


Eating
Breastfeeding was still going strong; still no bottle and not really drinking from a sippy yet. It had become quite the circus to try to get Myles to nurse for any significant amount of time. He was so active and interested in everything that was going on, I could never get him to focus and chill long enough to eat for more than 3-5 minutes. Even then, his hands always had to be playing with something (a habit he still has today 10 months later), which was either my hair, any part of my face, or his hair. The only time he would actually breastfeed was when we was tired: before naps, before bedtime, and upon waking up. 

Since he refused to eat purees, I had to take food introduction very slowly. I guess we would be considered Baby-Led Weaners, although I never really consciously made that decision or labeled ourselves as such. Myles pretty much made the decision for me when he decided to stop eating purees after about only one week of trying them at 6 months old. I honestly shouldn't have expected anything less from my offspring... never anything the easy way ;) At first I just let him chew on harder foods because that's all he wanted to do anyway. He really had no interest in eating, only chewing. As the weeks went on, I tested his ability to effectively chew and swallow various foods. It mostly ended up on the floor, but he was learning and I was fine with that. He got into the puffs and rice rusks around 8 months, and this month we introduced him to some soft fruits and veggies. He liked strawberries and blueberries and ate mixed stemmed veggies once. He also tried pancakes for the first time (mostly just chewing). It was completely hit or miss when it came to eating with Myles. Some days he didn't eat any real foods all day and other days he was very interested. I still worried a lot about this. His doctor wasn't too concerned, but she told me to keep trying at every mealtime. Luckily, he still breastfed a decent amount throughout the day, otherwise I would have been really stressed and freaking out about it. I knew he was still getting a lot of nutrients and calories from my milk, and he was growing perfectly fine. So we just kept at it.
 
Sleeping
Ahhh... the dreaded sleep category. I say this every time and if you have been keeping up with my monthly updates, then you know about our very frustrating and often debilitating struggle with sleep. Myles was not a sleeper from day one. The first night in the hospital he was seriously grunting, moaning, and groaning the entire time. And it never got any better. I very much wondered how it was physically possible for a newborn to live on as little sleep as he did. I think part of it was over-stimulation. For a long time, so much was always going on around him, I'm guessing it was hard for him to chill out. Over time, I did a lot of research and reading to figure out how to get him to sleep better. Once I learned about max wake times and the longest he was supposed to be awake for at one time (based on his age), I started getting him to take regular naps. It made a huge difference in his behavior and attitude. I wish I would have figured it all out sooner, but I really had no idea what I was doing and did the best I could following his lead. It took me a long time to figure out that I needed to take the lead in order to get him on a better schedule. 


So at nine months old, we were finally getting to where bedtime was a relief at the end of the night and not a time of dread and stress. He started sleeping for 8 hours straight this month!!! At the rate we were at just a couple months before, I thought I'd never see this day. He was sleeping in his crib from about 10pm-6am. Then when he woke up around 6am, I would get him and lay him in bed with me to nurse and sleep until we got up for the day sometime between 8:30-9:30.

 I can't even put into words what this did for me. I honestly felt like a whole different person and a real human being for the first time in over 9 months. It still took a long time for me to get adjusted to sleeping through that time, but just knowing that I could rest for 8 hours without having to get out of bed to feed and tend to my child dozens of times throughout the night was such a welcomed relief. To function as a real mother that did things with her child and to be able to interact with society again totally changed me. I felt new and whole again and I really started to really enjoy being a mother. Living on 1-2 hours of sleep a day for 9 months did a number on me physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc. Getting sleep was the first step to fixing all those issues and I was just so thankful it finally came! 
Thank you Myles for finally sleeping :)

Outings

• Myles got to finally meet the cutest little girl around, McKenna, for the first time this month. It was long overdo, but I'm so happy it finally happened. McKenna is the daughter of one of my very good friends. We went to the park across the street and let them play. She's about 9 months older than Myles and so was walking, but they were still able to play together a bit. 

• Conservatory: The conservatory in our town was recently updated and finally opened up after a year or more of being closed for the renovations. They were having a butterfly 'exhibit' and I wanted to take Myles to see all the cool things he wasn't supposed to touch :) Both of Myles' grandmothers came with to spend some time with him. He was super fascinated by the butterflies and wanted to touch all of them. The sign said not to touch the butterflies, but come on now.... that's the whole point! And most of them landed on you on their own anyway. I always love watching him see and experience new things. I often wonder what he is thinking when he sees all this stuff for the first time. 

• My aunt had a costume 50th birthday party this month as well. Everyone was supposed to dress up as their favorite musician. Since Myles' favorite song at the time was still LMFAO's "I'm Sexy and I Know It', I had to dress him up as a member of the Party Rock crew. I found the shorts in the girl section at Walmart and I painted the onesie with fabric paint. I also wore my shirt from when I dressed up as Sky Blu for Halloween a couple years ago. The picture at the bottom middle is of my aunt and Myles. She was totally 80s-out as Cyndi Lauper! He had a blast being the center of attention, as usual. And he even got to dance to his song before we left!

• Petting Zoo: This was technically the first zoo Myles went to. However I am a little hesitant to call it a full on zoo. I would describe it more as a farm/petting zoo. Not to take anything away from it, because it is really beautiful with tons of fun animals. It's just that it is small and really only has farm animals (there are a couple zoo animals though). Myles got to see horses, a zebra, lizards, turtles, lambs, pigs, goats, cows, lemurs, birds, llamas, monkeys, a mountain lion, and lots more. They also had real reindeer, which I had never seen before. I actually loved this place. Although it was small, it was very personal and interactive. Myles was a little goat whisperer in the petting zoo. Of course having food helped, but they were still all over him. We all really had a great time!

Milestones

• First kiddie pool: It finally got nice enough outside for us to fill up Myles' kiddie pool. I probably jumped the gun a little bit, but we were totally stir crazy from being cooped up in the house all winter! It was pretty much just an outside bath to him, but he had tons of fun. I bought this pool because it has a place where the hose can be hooked up and then the hippos mouth becomes a sprinkler. I thought Myles would love that feature, but he hated it. The first time I turned it on, he freaked out and wanted nothing to do with it. It might have been because it was cold water, but either way, we nixed that feature for future use.

• First Mother's Day: this month we got to celebrate my first Mother's Day! Being that it was a Sunday, we did out normal Sunday routine of church and brunch. Myles tried pancakes for the first time. I don't think he ate much, but he was acting like a super big boy! The rest of the day was spent outside since spring finally decided to come around! We also had to add in a little mini photo shoot, of course!

• First bug encounter: Like I said earlier, this month we soaked up every moment we could outdoors! Mostly that consisted of the front yard and park across the street, but Myles had no complaints! I love this little video I captured one day when we were sitting on a blanket in the front yard. He discovered a rolly polly bug and was completely fascinated by it. Watch what he does with it:

Likes

• I talked about his love for the HooplaKidz YouTube channel on my 7 & 8 months favorites post. It is a channel on YouTube that my step-dad found when he was looking for music to play for Myles. It is by far my favorite channel for nursery rhymes, fun songs, stories, spelling, and learning in general. At the time, Myles had no interest in kid's shows, but he loved the HooplaKidz songs. He would sit with his grandpa and watch the songs, totally mesmerized by the colors and sounds.

•  Balls: his ball obsession continued to grow this month. He no longer would accept being in his crib if not sleeping, so I had to find a new makeshift ball pit. And this is what I came up with: balls and laundry baskets, two of his favorites! 

• I started my blog this month and of course Myles wanted to give his introduction himself! I could never work on my computer when he was awake because he would get very upset if I didn't let him help. Even if he was playing perfectly fine, as soon as I opened my computer and started typing, he was right there whining to get in on the action. He's the type of kiddo that always wants to be involved in what you're doing. I guess he was wanting to make sure his story was being told accurately :)

Dislikes

• Still not totally feeling being in the car seat, but getting better. I had to become very strategic about when and where we would venture out based on his moods.
• Not getting to chew on whatever he could find to put in his mouth. This was mostly shoes... he always wanted to chew on people's dirty shoes! 
• Being confined: Now that he was an expert crawler and stander, he hated being stuck in something. That is why we had such a hard time with the stroller, car seat, high chair, etc. He wanted to be down exploring this whole new world! He was also finally over his jumperoo. We definitely got our money's worth out of it though.
• Jailed: we invested in baby gates this month because he would not stay out of the kitchen. Every time someone walked into the kitchen, he had to be right there at their feet! So we jailed him off. Sometimes, he didn't really notice or care but other times, he did not appreciate being blocked off from all the fun in the kitchen/dinning room.

 

Come back to check out my favorites from months nine & ten!