10 month milestones and Jenny's Journey

Today is the big day that my little guy turns 10 months old!  Very exciting, but yet very scary at the same time.  That means the countdown is on!  And yes, I have started planning his birthday party!  While I am sad that my baby boy will be turning 1 and becomes a "toddler", I am really excited for his party!  I LOVE birthdays- they are so important to me! I really try to remember everyone's birthday and send a card or at least let them I am thinking about them. (Although I do have to admit that I haven't does as well this year).

This past month has been pretty crazy at the Monaghan Pad. Caiden wants to explore every inch of the house.  He gets fascinated by the littlest things- it's so neat to watch and realize how much we take for granted! I have to share this video of him exploring the kitchen cabinets and playing with a door. I was cracking up! ( I was going to upload two but one went all night and never finished!)

Here are his 10 month milestones:

• Use thumb and finger pincer grasp to pick things up ( as you saw in my last post he loves to eat finger food!)
• Crawls well, with belly off the ground - and FAST!
• Puts objects into a container- this is one of his favorite things to do- he takes a ball from his ball popper and puts it in one of his stacking cups.  I just got him a shape sorter so we are going to work on that next! Here he is putting his ball in his new sippy cup.

• Stand holding on to someone or something
• Walk holding onto furniture - yep... he's cruising!
• Pull up to standing position from sitting
• Wave goodbye : we really have never tried to teach him this so he hasn't seen it much.  I'm going to start working on it though!
• Understand the word no but doesn’t always obey it - he tends to laugh when we say "no".  Hope that's not a sign of things to come!
• Respond to own name
• The big one- he just started today- Clapping his hands!! He started clapping while I was changing his diaper this morning!
• He's really acting like he wants to feed himself so Monday I let him at it. 

We don't have another doctor's appointment until his 12 month, so I'm not sure on his stats.  I sat him on the scale and it looks like he's about 20 lbs- but it's not a digital scale so it's hard to tell!  He still just has the bottom two teeth, but I really think that more are coming in on the bottom.  For those of you who have been following along on the sleeping saga- I think it is slowly getting better.  He just woke up crying right now so I hope I didn't jinx myself.  I'll be back...  Ok- He goes to bed at 7:00 no problem. He tends to wake up a couple of times within the first hour or two and we just go in and lay him back down and he goes back to sleep.  Typically he sleeps until 5:30 or 6am.  He does wake up in the night, but we have stopped going in, and he does go back to sleep.  On the napping front, he usually falls asleep in the car on the way home from class in the morning and will sleep about 30-40 minutes.  In the afternoons, I have worked with him so now he will nap in his crib for about 20-30 minutes.

I also wanted to tell you about the journey that my sister, Jenny, is on.  She has dedicated herself to run the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon on May 1, 2011.  This really surprised me when she told me because she was never a big runner in the past. Not that she wasn't able- I just never knew she was interested in it. She has been training with the Team in Training program for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) since last fall. She is doing this to honor a co-worker of hers who had recently passed away for myeloma. You can read about Clancy on her website. I am so proud of her for doing this and am trying to encourage her in any way I can. I would love it if you could check out her site (http://pages.teamintraining.org/mid/okcity11/jyinger), maybe leave her some words of encouragement and perhaps a donation to help her on her way if you feel so inclined!