Dear Mason: 11 Months

Dear Mason,
Happy 11 months baby boy! I cannot believe in just 1 short month you are going to be a whole year old! It feels like just yesterday I was writing on the calendar your due date. While I'm loving every stage of you growing up, I am starting to feel a little sad about the milestones we are going to leave behind.

You currently weigh 21.8 pounds (66th percentile) and are 27.75 inches tall (3rd percentile). You are still in 12 month sleepers and 9-12 month clothes. For Valentine's Day your onesie I ordered was 12-18 months because you seemed to be growing fast. Well it's safe to say you aren't growing as fast as I thought, that onesie pretty much swallowed you up. But we made it work.

We said bye bye to the paci except for when you are sleeping. You weren't all that attached to it so it wasn't terribly hard to do. However, it does help you soothe yourself to sleep so now my next step is to start to take it away when you sleep.

You are typically taking between 1-2 naps a day. Most days you will sleep from 10:30-12:30/1:30 & occasionally fall asleep on the drive home. However, if you only sleep an hour at 10:30 you will take another nap in the afternoon. When you wake up from your nap you do not care for us to go in right away and get you. If we go in right away you are a GROUCH! If we leave you to wake up and play for a little bit you are much happier when we get in there. As I type this you have currently found the wires to the monitor and are staring right at the camera swinging them back and forth. You will sometimes play with yourself in your crib for 20+ minutes before you are ready for us to come in and get you. I just let you lead the way with this.

For months now we have been writing that we are just certain you must be teething only to have a toothless baby for 10 months. However, we can now say that you have your first tooth! There's only one little bottom guy down there. We kept thinking the other was coming behind it but you seem to be pretty happy with just the one. You haven't bitten me while nursing yet however you have bitten your daddy pretty good on the finger and the toe.

We are still nursing. I think that this is the most difficult part for mama as you are turning 1. I'm not ready to be done with this stage of your life yet. I always said that I was going to nurse you until you were 1 but it's becoming a bit of a struggle. You aren't necessarily interested in it as much anymore. You're pretty hit or miss when you want to nurse and when you don't. Currently you nurse in the morning when you wake up and after we get home from the sitter. If daddy is around you absolutely will not nurse. You bit mommy for the first time the other day when I was trying to get you to nurse with your daddy around.

Some days you don't want to take a bottle, you would prefer that I nurse you at every feeding. We are lucky that your sitter is literally 2 minutes from my work so I can come throughout the day if I need to. Then there are some days you don't want to be held down to nurse, you would rather take all of your milk from a bottle in our laps. Then there's other days you don't even want us to feed you the bottle, you will roll around & push the bottle away until we finally lay you and the bottle on the floor. You will pick up the bottle, lay down and feed yourself. You are an independent one my little man. When you are finished with your bottle you like to flick the end of the bottle nipple with your thumb. The noise it makes when you flick it makes you laugh so hard.

You are still very into people food. You have a serious love for Mexican food just like your mama. If I would let you I think you would eat taco meat and ranch style beans for every single meal. You will even eat guacamole from a spoon if we let you. So it makes sense that your favorite meal at Miss DD's quickly became her taco soup.

You have also developed a love for saltine crackers. We can put a couple on your tray and you are content to just sit there and happily eat them. If we let you loose with the saltines however, you will not eat them. Rather you take one in each hand and squeeze them in your fist then fling the crumbs around everywhere.

You have become very interested in books again. You will sit in your chair with mama for 10-15 minutes just letting me read you book after book. It makes my teacher & book lover heart happy that you love books so much!

Your favorite shows on TV are currently Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Sesame Street & the occasional Mickey Mouse. Sesame Street was an immediate favorite for you. The second you hear the theme song come on it stops you in your tracks & when Elmo sings "Letter of the Day" you try to clap along and sing with them. It's pretty adorable if you ask me.

You are standing independently a lot this month. Sometimes you will let go, stand alone and get this look on your face like something's not right here and sit down. Other times you will stand by yourself for 30-45 seconds and just be smiling as big as you can so proud of yourself. We have been expecting you to take off and walk any day now but you just aren't brave enough. When you are standing alone if you see something you want you will just sit down and speed right on over to it. If we try to get you to practice walking between us you refuse to stand up. When we try to stand you up you stick your legs straight out in front of you until we finally give up let you sit you down. You have taken your first step. No surprise here, your daddy had a saltine and you tried to come after it.

At exactly 11 months you started to do little walking passes. Daddy set you down and you took 3 or 4 steps toward me then sat down. You wouldn't do it again so we got out the thin mints and you took some good steps for those.

You have always been pretty independent, however lately you are really running with this independence thing. You like it when we play with you sometimes, but there are times you want nobody to bother you. One evening after work Daddy & I tried to play with you in the living room floor and when we got close you would crawl away to play with something else. Finally you just crawled out of the room and went to your playroom as if to say "I've had enough people just give me my space already!" You remind me so much of your daddy in this aspect!

You are still very into exploring and figuring out how things work. Sometimes I will model for you how a toy works or how to do something but for the most part you want to figure it out and experiment for yourself and I love watching you do that. One of your very favorite things to explore is the dishwasher. If you even hear it open you race to the kitchen as fast as you can.

You have started to give Daddy & I kisses and we both think its the cutest thing in the world! You could be playing or crawling around the house and if we are on the floor you will come over to us, put your hands on both sides of or face and pull yourself over and give us a big open mouth kiss. It melts our heart! Of course you won't do it more than once or if you ask but we are relishing the ones that you give.

You have always been a mama's boy & you most definitely still are. This month you have taken a lot to daddy though! You typically are excited when you see daddy after a long day of work, however, you literally cannot contain your excitement when you hear the door or his voice. You bounce up and down and will mow anyone over that gets in your way of getting to him. You also had a weekend this month where the only thing in the world you wanted was your daddy. It was so sweet!

 Exciting things this month:
 You discovered how fun toilet paper can be

 *Play date with your cousin Lilah

  *GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!

 *We celebrated our first Valentine's Day

 *You took your first bubble bath

These past 11 months you have brought us more joy than you will ever know. Your smile can brighten up any day good or bad. I love watching you learn and grow every day. You are a blessing Mason Porter. We love you so very much!!

Love,
Mommy & Daddy

Month at a glance: January

On my sister's blog she always does a monthly picture recap & I love it! I didn't realize just how much time blogging with a baby takes! So hopefully this will be a fun way to look back.

Back to work for mom so dad and Mason had a man day 

 We had our first snow day together

 New tires on dad's truck=endless hours of fun

 Helping with the laundry & cooking

 Tried to enjoy the nice weather with the dump truck one afteroon

 Answering emails

 Shopping at target

 The Cowboy's playoff game

 Completed a round of 21 day fix extreme 

Started Insanity Max 30

 Already seeing exciting results! 

 Someone discovered the toilet paper & the toilet

 Helping mom meal prep

 Late night snuggles after Mason has fallen asleep

 Mason turned 10 months!

 I celebrated 100 days of school as a 100 year old lady

 We discovered that Mason is truly his daddy's twin!

 Miss Tiffany's son Braden started coming to Miss DD's with Mason

 Blake went on a Manuary road trip 

While Blake was gone someone made himself king of the castle in mom & dad's bed

 We got our first tooth and aren't quite sure what we think about it

Dear Mason: 10 month edition

Happy 10 months baby boy! This month mommy is realizing you are almost 1. I'm so proud of you for all you are accomplishing & learning but then I also become super sad that you are about to be ONE! How is that possible?!

You are weighing in at 21.4 pounds (68th percentile) & measuring  27.5 inches tall (5th percentile)
You have outgrown your 9 month sleepers & are in 12 month sleepers. I literally feel like this happened over night. You are wearing mostly 9 month clothes but we are mixing some 12 month in there. I feel like you spent forever in 6 month clothes & flew through 9 month clothes.

This month you have really slowed down on drinking momma's milk. I have stressed & worried over it so much but am starting to just accept that this is part of you growing up and enjoying people food more. You used to drink about 36 ounces a day and now you are drinking between 16-21 ounces a day.

You still really enjoy people food! This month we let you try sweets. Our plan was to let your first sweet be our traditional monkey bread on Christmas morning. However, as we were making Santa cookies on Christmas Eve we were posing for a picture and before we could stop you, you swiped a ball of cookie dough and jammed it in your mouth as fast as you could. I'd like to say you stopped there but when we took your picture with your Santa cookies you double fisted them and jammed them right in your mouth. You definitely got that love of sweets from your momma's side of the family! Pops used to share cookie dough with your momma often growing up.

Your favorite foods right now are chili, chicken enchilada soup, spaghetti, yogurt, oatmeal & waffles & peanut butter. You still absolutely hate eggs & I recently bought some prepackaged veggies and fruit to make things easier but you prefer to have fresh fruits and veggies.

An exciting thing in your life lately.....you are completely over your dairy allergy! YAY!!! This has been such a relief for mommy. However, we have discovered that I still cannot include dairy into my diet just yet. Something about the way that it comes through my milk still really upsets your tummy.

This month your sitter, Miss Tiffany, decided to go back to work. We were all so sad about this. Miss Tiffany was an answered prayer when mommy had to go back to work. It was an incredible relief and blessing when your backup sitter Miss DD said that she wanted to start keeping you every day. You were already used to her and loved her so it was a perfect & seamless transition. You absolutely love her too and I know you guys play hard every day because little one you are straight WORN OUT at the end of the day. I know that all sitters are great, however I hope these 2 women are always incredibly special to you because they truly love you like mommy and daddy do.

You are still a toothless little wonder, my love. We know that a tooth is very close on the bottom because your gums are very swollen but still nothing has popped through just yet.

 

You are still crawling and walking behind stuff. You are getting much faster at walking when daddy holds your hands and walks you places you move really fast now. For a second I see a glimpse of what you will look like when you are walking. I think youre going to be a fast boy that gives us a run for our money! You are starting to try to stand on your own. The time you are able to stand before sitting is getting longer and longer.  

This month has been a HUGE learning month for you! I feel like you are learning something new every single day. You have always been interested in the wheels on cars, but this month you have started actually playing with the cars rolling them back and forth on the tile.

You have also learned how to swipe daddy's iphone back and forth to change the screen or look through pictures.

You have really good hand-eye coordination. You have a dump truck that has a hole in the top of it and you take the balls out of the back and put them in the hole. You will sit and do this for ever!

Your favorite place in the kitchen to be is right under momma's feet. You love playing in the dishwasher, with the pots & pans, measuring spoons & your very favorite place is the spice cabinet. You spend the majority of your times in the evening in there.

You LOVE to dance!! Any time any music comes on the tv or we turn Alexa on you start grooving. It doesn't matter if you're sitting, standing or crawling you're going to smile and start shaking your little booty right there. 

Exciting things from this month:

*You celebrated Christmas at Nana's house

*Santa came to visit

 

*We celebrated your first Christmas

*You celebrated Christmas with the Kemp family

 

*We celebrated our first New Years Eve

 

*You discovered your shadow

 

*We lost our dining room to all of your toys. 

*You started at your new sitter Miss DD.

*We had our first "snow day" together

You are so happy go lucky & light up every single day of our lives. You have a contagious smile & when you laugh you do so with your entire body. It is one of my very favorite things about you. I hope you are always so care free & happy. I love you baby boy!
Love, Mommy