Ten months

How can it be that in two months my baby will be 1? And, really, he’s not even my baby anymore. He is officially a toddler. Why is it that the child I most wanted to stay a baby the longest is the first to walk? It just doesn’t seem fair. Thankfully, he is still a wonderful cuddler (at least when he is tired) so I still get to enjoy some baby-bonding time. But, that’s not all that has happened in the last month.

Since February Ben

• Started eating 100 percent table food. He loves sweet potatoes, mandarin oranges, green beans, yogurt and just about anything else I put in front of him. Come to think of it I can’t think of a single food he has rejected as of yet. I just wish we had more varied tastes so he would grow up eating more than meat and potatoes.
• Cut his bottles back to about 4 a day with 6 oz. in each one. But, sometimes even getting that in is a struggle. I can usually get him to drink about 4 to 5 oz. before he tires of it.
• Started drinking from a sippy cup at meal time. He doesn’t seem to have any problems with it, though I am still trying to find ones I like. I had forgotten just how much I  hate those leaking things.
• Continued with his on-again, off-again sleeping style. We will have a couple of really good nights followed by a few really bad nights. Thankfully Mike is helping (and by helping I mean taking Ben to the couch to sleep for the rest of the night) so it isn’t all falling on me.
• I believe the restless nights have to do with him cutting teeth and this cold that won’t go away. He has three teeth (the top left one has come in) and the top right is just about ready to pop, at least that’s the way it looks.
• Almost outgrown some of his 12 month clothes. The shirts are getting a little snug around the belly and the jeans (well, the Old Navy 6-12 months) are getting a little short, but he still swims in the 18-month stuff.
• Has a love/hate relationship with his brothers. He loves to annoy play with them and they love to  hate him. Except when they love him. And even that is questionable. Their idea of love usually involved him crying. He wants to do everything his brothers are doing and they aren’t always down with that idea. I see a lot of this in my future.
• Loves playing in the cupboards and with the lazy Susan. His favorite “toy” is a jug of vinegar.

Have a drink

Now that Ben is on table food I am trying to do a better job of remembering to give him something to drink with his meals. I know I don’t like to eat a meal without a beverage and I’m beginning to think he feels the same way. After just a couple of tries Ben is drinking from a sippy cup like a champ. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one that doesn’t leak either because the spouts are too big or the seals come loose when he throws them to the ground again and again and again and again. He has most definitely learned about cause and effect.

When Dad’s away …

Mom gets lazy. These last few weeks have been brutal with work. I am swamped. Mike is swamped. And now he is gone. So, since I am still doing a lot of work from home every night the house is a disaster and the boys are watching way more TV than I care to admit. Nick has been glued to the iPad and Netflix since we broke down and got it last month. He loves so many episodes of iCarly at his fingertips (though I noticed he watches a lot of the same ones over and over again).

And dinner is whatever they will eat, which means bread and yogurt and cheese for Zander (he puts the yogurt on the bread) and tortillas with cheese for Nick. At least I give them fruit with it!

Mr. Independent

There are some days that Nick can be super independent. He is tall enough to reach just about everything in our house and if he can’t get it from his feet he most definitely can with the help of a chair. Lately he’s taken to wanting to help pack his lunch. Sounds great right. Except I have two hours to get myself and two kids ready, pack two lunches, feed one child a bottle and another breakfast and get out the door. Thankfully Mike takes care of Nick so I have one less task on my checklist each morning. When Nick makes his lunch I still have to supervise. And he is still kind of really slow. So his “help” ends up taking me longer. I just have to remind myself that someday his help will really be a help, and then he won’t offer it up anymore. Ah, the joys of motherhood. And, yes, that is what my countertop looks like every morning. It is chaos everyday.

One food at a time

Confession time. I’ve never had a sweet potato. That means I have never cooked one either. I guess I didn’t realize I could throw it in the microwave just like I do with regular potatoes. So, I finally bought one for Ben and cooked it up. He loved it! I wasn’t surprised considering sweet potatoes were the first baby food I fed him and he liked them through all his trials and tribulations with food. Now I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t do this for the other boys. Nick was sitting next to Ben when I put this on the tray. He just crinkled his nose and moved as far away as possible. I can’t say I blame him. I tried a bite. It wasn’t awful, but nothing great. Maybe if I dressed it up a little it wouldn’t be so bad.

Trouble with a capital T

That’s what this one is. We are struggling with baby-proofing the house because we don’t want to incapacitate Nick and Zander’s ability to be independent, but we also need to keep Ben safe. It’s a delicate balancing act that we are still trying to figure out. So for right now, it is pretty much a free for all in our house. If I was a praying woman I would be doing a lot of it, hoping that Ben doesn’t find a stray Lego or marble or raisin on the floor and think he needs to see what it tastes like. For now though his favorite place to play is in the cupboard under the sink … you know, where all the completely safe toxic cleaners are. Great, huh?

The worst part is, is he knows he shouldn’t be under there. Look at that smile. He’s saying “I got you wrapped around my chubby little finger mommy. You just keep sitting there and taking pictures while I destroy everything.”

So I do. Because he’s cute. And I can’t resist his smile.

Or his dimples.

Or his eyelashes.

It’s true

A small part of my had hoped that Mike was just kidding me – that my baby wasn’t (gulp) a toddler. But, he wasn’t kidding. As soon as Ben rolled out of bed this morning I had him down on the floor and was coaxing him to walk. He wasn’t all that into it, but he took 3 steps for me too. Ack. I can’t believe it, my baby is officially gone. I am now the mother of a kindergartner, preschooler and toddler.