Dear Levi,

You are ten months old! I can’t believe how quickly you are growing up–and growing out. You officially have a pudgy baby belly! You’re now in size 3 diapers and are already starting to outgrow the size 6-9 clothing you only starting wearing last month. Gosh, I love your chunky little rolls.

You’re a super fast crawler and have figured out how to get into a sitting position from your tummy and from all fours. It was such a surprise to find you sitting up in your crib one morning! You aren’t standing yet, but I can tell that in the last week or so you’ve starting to consider it. In your crib, you kneel while holding onto the railing and have been trying to do the same in your Pack-N-Play. Since you can’t reach the top, though, you usually end up falling against its mesh sides.

As you scurry across the room, you pause to look under and inside of things. You’ll lift up your new play mat and area rugs and investigate all sides of your toys. Being in constant motion has made it quite challenging for me to dress you and change your diapers. You flip yourself over before I can secure your Pampers and won’t bend your elbows when I try to put on your shirts. (By the way, this happens in your crib or on the floor; you would roll right off the changing pad if I were to use it.) I am literally sweating and out of breath after wrestling you into your clothing.

Mealtime can also be difficult. I have never seen a baby eat as slowly as you do! On more than one occasion this month, it has taken you almost 45 minutes to finish your dinner. You’re not always into the chunks in your stage 3 baby food, so to make some of the new textures more appetizing, I have to add a squeeze of puréed fruit or veggies to each bite. However, you have totally mastered the sippy cup and sometimes nonchalantly drink from it with a one-handed hold.

Several times this month I was convinced you must be teething because you were cranky and cried for no apparent reason. Whiny and irritable, you would scream randomly throughout the day and starting waking up before 6am. Just this past week, the day before you turned 10 months old, you skipped your afternoon nap all together and batted the spoon away as I tried to feed you dinner. You frequently put your fingers in your mouth now, but I have yet to feel or see any baby teeth poking their way through!

For the most part you continue to be a smiley, happy baby. Swinging at the playground and games of peek-a-boo make you laugh, and you have started showing preferences for certain books. Your favorites include Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Kiss Good Night, and you will sit on my lap and pay attention to the stories as I read them to you. Bath time is still one of your favorite activities, but I can tell you are beginning to feel confined in your blow up rubber ducky tub. It’s also time to swap out some of your baby toys for more interactive ones to engage your curiosity and perhaps motivate you to stand up and start cruising (even though I’m not mentally prepared for that yet!). But maybe toys are overrated because one of your most favorite things to do is pull your books out of their basket!

The most exciting development this month, though, may be that I made the decision to significantly cut back my working hours so that I can care for you at home full time. I never thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom, but it was so difficult to see and hear you playing with the nanny during the day. I decided that I couldn’t miss out on all of the little moments. After all, you will only be my little baby for a short time!

This month’s stats: On a good day you wake up between 6:30-7am (by the way, I took out your crib bumper this month!). I nurse you and wait about 30-45 minutes before feeding you solid breakfast. Your first nap happens around 9-9:30am, and you’re pretty good about falling asleep quickly and can snooze for approximately two hours in the morning. Lunch takes place between 11:30-12, and I’ll either nurse you before you eat or before your afternoon nap. I try to put you back down around 2-2:30pm, but you tend not to fall asleep until almost 3:30pm. You wake an hour or 1.5 hours later, so dinner is around 5:30pm. Finally, you nurse before going to bed at 7-7:30pm. Worth noting: You have significantly cut back on how long you nurse during each breasts ending session to about 3 minutes at a time.

Whew! So many developments! I love you so much, buddy bear!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

Dear Levi,

You are nine months old–and officially a baby on the move! You decided to give crawling a shot on St. Patrick’s Day, and we have video of you wiggling your way across the carpeted basement floor. After weeks of practice, you’re now able to get up on all fours and deliberately alternate your arms and legs as you move forward, which means it is really time to baby proof the house!

Shortly after you turned eight months old, you came down with RSV. Your coughing fits scared me because when your face turned bright red and it appeared as though you were choking, I was convinced that you couldn’t breathe. I even had to call your pediatrician at home! Unfortunately, there was no medication we could give you to stop the cough and we to wait almost a week for it to pass.

Changing your diaper is nearly impossible now. As soon as I put you on your back, you flip yourself over onto your tummy. You are such a squirmy worm! Daddy and I think you definitely look older, and your golden brown hair seems to be getting wavy. When I dress you, I’m now putting you in size 6-9/6-12 outfits. Packing up your size 3-6 clothing, I couldn’t believe how much of your winter wardrobe you didn’t get to wear because it wasn’t that cold outside, although maybe we didn’t take you out all that much when it was chilly.

Daddy has been away for work for half the month, but before he left, he moved your crib mattress down to the second level. You are averaging 10-11 hours of sleep a night! No more waking up to breastfeed. Now when you wake up around 5:30-6am, you are ready to start your day. You are quickly turning me into an early bird! I love the time we spend together before the sun rises.

You learned some new party tricks while you were eight months old like putting your thumb in your mouth and making clicking noises with your tongue. It makes you laugh when we click our tongues back at you! Mealtime has become especially messy in the last week, as you’ve discovered how to blow raspberries and your preferred time to do it is while you are eating. I think I need to wear a bib while I feed you! You still haven’t mastered the sippy cup, but some of your very smart friends also had difficulty figuring out how to tip it, so I’m not really concerned. Eventually you’ll learn.

Oh, and you still love bath time! You are very happy to sit in your inflatable duck tub scooping up water with your toys and banging them together. Sometimes you recline and stretch your legs over the side of the tub, and occasionally you try to roll over onto your belly. Maybe it’s time for more swim lessons!

This month’s stats: At your 9 month check-up, your doctor was smiling from ear to ear because Operation Chubbs was a success! You gained nearly three pounds in three months, putting you back on the chart. You are now 17.8lbs and in the 6th percentile for weight. Hooray! You are 28.75 inches long, which is a very good height to be. We’ll continue mixing butter into your food, but now we can start feeding you slightly chunky (but still mushy) grown-up food in addition to pureed baby food even though you don’t have any teeth yet! You currently nurse when you wake up and eat breakfast 30 minutes to an hour later. After your 9:30-11:30am nap, you get lunch, and I nurse you again an hour or so after that. You sleep from about 2:30-4:30pm (sometimes 3-5pm) and breastfeed when you wake. Dinner is an hour later, and I offer you a breastmilk night cap just before bed.

Stay sweet and happy, baby guy!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

{photo taken four days after Levi’s 9 month birthday, 4/16/12}

Dear Levi,

You are seven months old! Such a big boy! You look older, too. I love how your hair swoops across your forehead, and it appears as though your eyebrows are getting darker. Every three days or so I have to trim your nails (or “razor claws,” as daddy calls them) because they grow ridiculously fast.

From a developmental perspective, this past month was major. You started eating solid food and have loved nearly every spoonful of pureed fruits and vegetables we’ve fed you. Except for avocados. You weren’t crazy about them. And you seemed repulsed by the taste of ranch dressing, one of the condiments the pediatrician suggest we try to help you gain some weight. Instead, we’ve been melting a sliver of butter into your food twice a day. Since your diet has changed, so has your poop! Your daddy and I never know what we are going to find in your size 2 diaper, but whatever color or consistency it turns out to be, it always stinks.

On January 22nd you sat up unassisted for the first time. I think I may always remember that date; what a huge milestone! Now you can sit in a restaurant high chair rather than being strapped into your car seat. This month you also mastered your jumperoo and get a kick bouncing in it for an extended period of time. I love watching your little feet go up and down as if you are doing an Irish jig. You aren’t crawling yet, but I imagine you will be soon, as you have started pushing your tummy higher and higher off the ground, which sometimes causes you to slide backwards on our wood floor.

Sophie the Giraffe is one of your most beloved toys, and your new noisy trick is making clicking noises with your tongue. We can get you to laugh by making those same silly sounds back at you. Speaking of noise, you are one loud kiddo! You enjoy practicing your consonants at full volume, the best sound being “ma ma ma ma ma,” of course. Eventually, you’ll be addressing me when you say that!

You now sit upright in the toddler half of your blue plastic bathtub and kick and reach for floating bath toys. Naturally, they all go straight into your mouth! Since you like the water so much, we started taking swim lessons at the JCC, and you’ve even let me dunk you three times! We also go to music class as a family once a week, and although you are the youngest of the group, we think you enjoy the songs as much as the bigger kids.

But perhaps my favorite thing that you’ve started to do this month is look for and grab pacifiers to self-soothe when you are trying to fall asleep in your crib. Once, as I watched on the baby monitor, I was convinced you were going to start crawling because the pacifier you wanted was just slightly out of reach!

This month’s stats: You eat approximately 5-6 times a day. I nurse you around 3-4am and again between 7-7:30am. For lunch your nanny feeds you solid food and gives you a 3oz bottle, and in the afternoon you get a 7-8oz bottle. Daddy or I give you dinner, and I nurse you again before bed between 7-8pm. You go down easy at night but still aren’t crazy about napping. Your morning nap starts between 8-9am and (ideally) lasts until 10-11am. Your afternoon nap tends to be the shortest; sometimes you only sleep for 45 minutes around 2pm, which means you need a third mini-nap in the early evening. Your 3-6 month clothing is starting to get a little bit too short on you, but you aren’t quite wide enough to fill out your 6-9 month wardrobe yet. Maybe we need to buy you a baby-sized belt to help keep your pants up!

Stay silly and happy, baby guy!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

{photo taken on Levi’s 7 month birthday, 02/12/12}

Dear Levi,

You are six months old! Happy half birthday! The day you were born, July 12, 2011, seems like a lifetime ago, yet the months have passed so quickly. I look at photos of you as a newborn and can hardly remember you being that small.

You continue to eat your oatmeal like a champ, making much less of a mess during dinner time. You’ve stopped batting your arms at the spoon and have started opening your mouth in anticipation of the food. However, the oatmeal does not help you sleep any longer at night, so at Christmas we decided it was time to sleep train following the Ferber Method. You no longer wake up between 1-2am for a diaper change, but you can only go 7-8 hours from when you fall asleep until you wake up to eat. On a good night that means you go to bed at 7:30pm, wake up at 3:30am and start your day around 6:30-7:00am. On a bad night, we could be up multiple times.

Speaking of sleep, you now take all of your naps in your crib, and you no longer mind sleeping on your stomach (although your favorite position is on your side). You’ve mastered rolling over but are still working on sitting up unassisted. Another cool development? When we say your name, you look up at us! And while you were all about blowing bubbles last month, you now enjoy sticking out your tongue all the time.

You get the giggles when we play games like peek-a-boo, but you laugh the most for Daddy. He makes silly noises into your neck and lifts you up over his head, blowing air into your face. You love that. Sometimes I get jealous because I can’t get you hysterical like he can. But I know I must be doing something right because you’re starting to show signs of separation anxiety when I pass you off to somebody new. And when I carry you, it really feels as though you’re reaching your arms around me, holding tight. But what really melts my heart is when you rest your tired little head on my shoulder. That’s the best thing ever.

Now for stats: You’re eating 5-6 times during the day and once at night. Two of those daytime feedings are 7oz bottles that your nanny gives your while I work. Most of your clothing is size 3-6 months, but some brands don’t fit as well as others because you are pretty thin. That means many of the outfits we bought for you to wear this winter still don’t fit! You’re a whopping 28 inches long but weigh only 14lbs 6oz. It could just be that you’re predisposed to be a skinny kiddo, but your pediatrician wants us to try to fatten you up by adding butter, mayo or ranch dressing to your baby food for a month. Yep, it’s time for fruits, vegetables, dairy and meat! I have a feeling you’re going to love eating.

Keep laughing and growing, baby guy!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

{photo taken the day before Levi’s 6 month birthday, 01/11/12}