Nole's 11 month-a-versary

This is just a real quick list of things I want to remember about the last few months:

Nole,
- you crawled forward for the 1st time on November 18th

- you pulled up for the 1st time sometime during our trip over Christmas (when we got home we had to drop your crib down to the lowest setting so you wouldn't climb out)

- you also stood by yourself for the first time during Christmas for about 10 seconds as you were distracted by clapping.  You don't seem to be interested in walking yet but your cruze and climb on and over everything.  Your balance is really good but crawling just seems to be fastest for you right now.

- you have 4 teeth, 2 on top and 2 on the bottom.  It seems that 2 more on each side on the top will be the next to appear

-you were sleeping great (7:30pm- 5am, eat, sleep again until 6:30) until just last week.  You had gotten to be so easy to put down at night.  After you nursed you would just lay down in your crib, roll over and grab your lamb and fall asleep.  Now your sleeping is all out of sorts again!  ahh! hopefully we'll get it figured out :)

- no real meaningful words yet but you make your voice be heard about almost everything!  You're such a loud little man.  You are so close to spitting out real words...you frequently say dada, ba, st, eeeee, up, & hey- and I think you recently figured out how to say something that sounds like "mom" ;)

- you have figured out how to dance.  So cute :) Especially when we sing "Jump up, jump up, get down!"

- you have been crawling up and down the stairs for quite a while now.  You've only taken one small tumble half way down the stairs which scared me to death...but the only thing you cried about was that I wouldn't put you back down so you could start climbing again!

- YOU ARE STUBBORN...enough said :)

- you love being outdoors.  You are such a trooper out at track practice everyday.  You have perfected your bear crawl since the track and turf is tough on your knees.  The kids adore you and want to play with you and hold you but you prefer to crawl every where and investigate everything on your own.

- you are great at clapping and showing us that you are "so big"

- you mastered the sippy cup right away when you started with it at about 6 months.  A few months ago you figured out the straw sippy cup.  You feed yourself almost everything but we still like to give you a couple servings of fruit and vegetable puree each day, along with yogurt and oatmeal.

- we just started offering you whole milk in your sippy cup at one of your meals.  I think you prefer water but hopefully you'll soon make the switch.  Your typical nursing schedule is 5:30am, 10:00 am, sometimes 2pm, and bedtime.

-you love showing us your tummy and patting and pinching it

- your Nanapants cloth diapers are working great for you.  The only time you wear a disposable is at night or if you're going to stay in the nursery during Bible study (or if I'm lazy and don't get them in the wash right away)

- your favorites on YouTube are still any of the School House Rock videos, but lately you have also enjoyed Pingu, Pocoyo, and Veggie Tales, and random clips of other babies laughing or of puppies playing
- speaking of puppies, you love them :)  You sometimes crawl around and bark.  You'll pet any dog and let them lick you from head to toe.  You get real mad when we have to stop petting the puppy.  You like cats, too....they don't usually like the "petting" as much, though

- your "itsy bitsy spider" is the cutest :)

- we haven't been able to get through a church service lately.  You can only be distracted with books, Chex, and water so long before you want to get down and crawl...which isn't possible, so you get pretty frustrated.  If you liked it better in the nursery we might think about leaving you there but it seems like at this point that would be torture for you!

- you wear size 18 month clothes and size 4-5 for shoes.  I just bought you some new things in the 24 month size because you will be wearing those in no time.

We can't believe it will be your 1st birthday in one short month!  We love you more than we ever thought we could love someone :)