Well Zane, this month’s post is kind of short. Now that you are crawling and moving around so much, Mommy has a lot to do just keeping up with you – everything you pick up goes in your mouth, and I don’t think you ever stay in the same spot for more than a few seconds. Unless you’re eating or sleeping!
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On January 10, you ate food all on your own for the first time. You just started eating chunks around Christmastime… before that, even though you have teeth and you COULD eat cut up chunks, you would get mad if something wasn’t pureed. Then suddenly you started eating pieces, and only a couple of weeks later you started picking up the pieces and putting them into your own mouth! You didn’t do it gradually… one meal, Mommy still had to feed you, and the next one you suddenly started to do it yourself! It was a rough meal… you are still pretty clumsy at getting the food to your mouth, and every time you dropped something you would cry. But you did a great job!
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After your first foray into feeding yourself, the next day you ate your WHOLE lunch with no help at all. I called your Dad at work and told him he should have seen you at lunch. He asked “was he an eatimo?” and yet another nickname was coined! You lost interest pretty quickly though, and now you will start out eating on your own but after a lot of drops and misses, Mommy or Daddy has to help you.
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Of course, with feeding yourself came putting other things into your mouth! January 11, just a day after your first self-feeding demonstration, was the first time Mommy caught you eating something off the floor. Maybe you have done it before… who knows? But that was the first day you got caught doing it. Mommy frantically jammed a finger into your mouth to hook out whatever was in there, and lo and behold – it was food. Cue the loud sigh of relief.
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Mommy’s relief was short-lived, of course… the better you get at putting food in your mouth, the easier it is for your to put everything else in too! So far, objects of note that have been retrieved from your mouth include the green fibers from the artificial Christmas tree, a pointy shard of clear plastic, a motherboard thumb screw, a GIANT dust bunny, and grass that you pulled off Charlie. Nothing toxic, but a couple of those could have been bad if you’d swallowed them! Mommy is getting more obsessed by the day with following you around and taking things away from you!
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Around mid-January, you took the next step in eating – you started holding your sippy cup or straw cup and drinking on your own. Now you have a cup with you all the time and you LOVE to have water with your meals, just like Mommy and Daddy. You are REALLY good at drinking out of the straw cup – you’ve known how to drink from a straw since you were about 3 months old – but you haven’t quite got the sippy cup down yet as you haven’t figured out that you have to tip it up.
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By the end of January, you were so good at feeding yourself that Mommy and Daddy don’t help you at all anymore. You eat all your meals on your own and you’re FAST. At least we think you are… we don’t really have any other kids to compare to! You’re so independent with your eating that some foods like bread or cheese don’t even need to be cut up anymore.
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And the biggest milestone you had this month: You stood up for the first time! Mommy was sitting on the couch and you were playing on the floor, and suddenly Mommy looked down and you were STANDING! You had pulled yourself up using the end of the coffee table, and you were just standing there hanging on for dear life looking a little bit confused and stuck. Mommy got a picture of you standing there, but I wish I’d actually seen you get up! The things we parents miss!
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Anyway, Zane, you’re not even a year old yet and Mommy and Daddy are amazed every day at the steps you’re making toward growing up. We are both proud and sad at the same time… proud because we think you’re the brightest and cutest baby in the world, and sad because you are so quickly changing from a baby into a little boy. We hope you know that we will always love you no matter what changes you go through, and we hope you’ll like to stay close and not make us miss you too much. We love you.
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