10 Months, Whaaat up

I know I say this all of the time, but how is Ben already 10 months old? He is too cute right now. First of all, he's hilarious. I know every mom says this about their kid, but seriously, he's really funny. He gets this look in his eye like he's getting ready to do something crazy/bad/dangerous and then will turn and grin as if to say "you know you can't get mad at me, I'm too damn cute". Of course he would never say damn, because he's too damn cute for that. 

 

Everyday I feel like he's about a second away from just standing up and walking around by himself. He's cruising everywhere. For those of you who don't know, (I, for one, had to google "cruising") cruising apparently means pulling up and walking around by holding on to furniture. He can stand alone for brief seconds at a time, but (is it OK that I am kind of excited this happened??) there was a major set back about 3 weeks ago. He got a little too ambitious in his skills, and let go of his trusty table, and fell straight sideways directly onto his shoulder. That threw him for a quite a loop. He screamed for about (what seemed like) 20 minutes- it was probably like all of 90 seconds. I honestly thought he had hurt himself, but after a little bit he was back to playing. Since then he's been a little more careful and cautious about letting go of things. To tell the truth, I am pretty excited about this little accident, because, quite frankly, I am not at all ready for him to start walking. I am still getting used to the fact that he can crawl around our house in a matter of 15 seconds, so I can't even imagine what it's going to be when he's walking all over the place. Going by the speed that he crawls, there probably won't be much walking anyway, it will more than likely be running, meaning I am going to be even more tired than I already am...But, whatever, I'm excited either way! I think it will be great AND hilarious when he starts running/walking all over the place. New adventures everyday, I'm sure! 

Speaking of tired (I did mention that earlier, right?) Ben doesn't sleep. Ever. For almost 6 weeks he's been a teeerrrrible sleeper. It's insanity. Like, literally, I think I'm going insane sometimes. He's been better the last week or so, so I finally feel like a human being again, but up until then it was really hard. He was waking up every 2 hours, wanting to eat, and screaming. At first I thought it was his teeth, or a growth spurt, or something short-term, but when it continued for over a month I started to get a little bit concerned  (Evan and I need to sleep!!!!) Not to mention that Ben needed his sleep too! At Ben's 9 month check-up, which was in early October, my doctor recommended we give him Tylenol + Ibuprofen one time, right before bed, for a week. He felt like his teeth were hurting him and the medicine would get him back into a rhythm of sleeping longer than 15 minutes at a time. Of course medicine wasn't his first option, but we had done the whole "cry-it-out" Ferber thing for THREE weeks, by the book, and it wasn't working at ALL. So, our doc knew we needed sleep, and knew Ben needed sleep too. He assured me this would work. The doses were pretty high, so for a 20 lb baby this should knock him right out..right?? .... WRONG. Ben is apparently some kind of super baby with the ability to tolerate doses of medicine that would normally knock out a 30lb baby. Ben was still waking up 2 hours after we put him in his crib, and then every 1-2 hours after that. After doing this for 3 days I stopped giving him the meds, because they obviously weren't working, and I didn't want to give him medicine for no reason. We were back to square one. So the following week I contacted the dr's office again. About 24 hours later I finally convinced the nurse that I needed the dr to call me back directly.  After a 45-minute heart to heart with Dr. K that night (yes, he called me directly, which was awesome!) we decided that maybe some of the food he was eating is hurting his stomach. So we cut out all solid foods for a week, to see if that made a difference. After the first 24 hours of no solids Ben slept from 11-6!!!!!!!!!! OMG. Waking up after more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep made me feel like I could run a marathon. A-mazing. The last week or so have been a little easier. Last night he slept from 8p to 1, then from 1:30 to 7a. I'll take it! We are slowly starting to reintroduce solids back into his diet, to see if there's something we're feeding him that's making his belly hurt. It's frustrating at times because it's so much trial and error. But, listen, when it comes to sleep I'll try about anything. Sleep deprivation is a total b-word, which, in turn, makes me a total b-word ;)

Regardless of our sleeping "issues" Ben is an absolute joy. He is learning new things every single day. Now he can point, hug, laugh, babble (on and on and on..) wave bye-bye, cruise, stand for brief seconds at a time, entertain himself while I'm cooking dinner or cleaning.. and the list goes on. What is cracking me up the most right now is his ability to laugh hysterically when he gets excited. This isn't the laugh he had when he was 3 months old, this is the mama-im-so-excited-right-now laugh that comes deep from his belly. He will start doing this when we are playing or I chase him around the house while he's crawling. He thinks it's so funny when I crawl around with him. I'll have to get a video and post it on here, because it's hilarious.

Another thing he does now is crawl into his room and sit right by the door and say "bye-bye" and close the door (like he needs some alone time). Meanwhile, I'm outside of his room, I'll knock, and say "Ben, can I come in?" and then I open the door ever so slightly. He will then peak his little head around the smile real big and then scream "BYE-BYE" and close the door again. This is so funny to him. When he closes the door I can hear him laughing on the other side, and when I knock he breaks out in hysterics. We do this for about 10-15 every.single.day. I LOVE it. I guess it's his version of hide-and-seek.

He still loves pretty much any food, and now when we go to restaurants we can order him noodles with olive oil and he can eat that! He seems to really enjoy them. The more texture the better! Avocados, bananas, carrots, sweet potatoes, anything green, and yogurt top his list of fave foods. And when I feed him, he likes to hold his own spoon, and "feed" me while I feed him with a separate spoon. It's pretty darn cute!

That's my ten month update! If I think of anything else, I'll post!