Friday, February 24, 2017

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


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