the littlest carscadden: 10 months

Walking? Yeah, my 10 month old walks. Reliably. He's even started using it as his main form of locomotion. He pretty much uses crawling to get to a place where he can pull himself to standing so that he can continue walking. He walks the entire length of our downstairs, around the coffee table, back into the dining room and over the lip up into the kitchen. He's certainly not perfect at it, especially with shoes on, as his face can attest. His face got in a fight with the brick sidewalk in Fells Point on Saturday. Unfortunately the ground won. It's pretty awesome carrying a child much too small to be walking down the sidewalk in a busy shopping area with blood pouring out of his mouth. And by that I mean, "No, I didn't just backhand my child." Here he is walking around his room. Reggie is the black thing behind the shade:

Status of Miles' two front teeth: officially in. I think he's going to take after me in terms of size of front teeth. His are very wide, chiclet teeth, like mine. But I love my smile, even though it took many years of orthodontia to achieve it. Thanks, mom!

You know that feeding problem we've been struggling with over the last five months? We might have fixed it with a very small and easy change. We were lucky enough to be gifted an entire bottle system by a friend of my mother's. With that bottle system came 20 or so four ounce bottles, four 10 ounce bottles, 40 nipples, two plastic handles so the baby can hold the bottle himself, and an entire electric pump and pump parts. She also gave us rattles, baby spoons, and cages for washing all these small parts in the dishwasher. Of the nipples she gave us, about half had one hole and half had four holes. I didn't know this but the one hole "slow flow" nipples are really intended for newborns only and the four hole "fast flow" were intended for babies over 6 months. We have tried the fast flow nipples with Miles a bunch of times but they're too fast; he comes up gagging and coughing and sputtering and won't take the bottle again. Even if he is able to take the fast flow bottle in its entirety, he often swallows so much air with the liquid that he's bound to throw up at the end of the feed, essentially making the feed pointless. So we had been sticking with the slow flow nipples. Little did I know there were nipples with MEDIUM FLOW! If I had had to buy any of these supplies myself I probably would have known this but Lucas and I have never needed to enter the bottle aisle of any baby section because we were set with supplies. Medium flow nipples have totally changed the game. Before the change Miles was taking approximately 16-18 ounces of fortified breast milk or concentrated formula. After changing to medium flow nipples, Miles takes in on average 22-23 ounces a day and one day last week he took in 27! TWENTY SEVEN OUNCES!!! He's never taken in that much ever before. One time he took in 28 ounces but he threw up large amounts twice that day! He weighs in this coming Friday for his 10 month check up. We'll see how much these nipples have changed the game. The only downside to this increase in fluid is that he is taking in less solid food. I think with time, once his belly gets used to this volume, he'll pick back up on the solid foods.

On the skill development front, Miles now points constantly, albeit a little aimlessly. He also can flip the pages of a board book by himself. He has been flipping the pages during story time for a long time but now he can kind of do story time himself. And lastly, but not leastly, Miles has said his first word! He likes to say it over and over and over again. It's not "mama," it's not "dada." It's not even "ball" or "cat" or "no." He says "Hi!" He says it when he first sees someone, like when I get home from work, or when he wakes up from a nap, or when he sees Reggie after he hasn't seen him for a while. But he also says it when he's happy and just because. Hopefully some other words will follow soon because "Hi" is getting a little old.

There are different types of parenting. There are "helicopter" parents; ones who hover around their children to prevent them from falling or hurting themselves. There are parents who are more laid back; a little bit of falling and bruising helps a child learn. And then there's me. Lucas says I'm the opposite of a helicopter parent. He said this right after I said, "Let's see how far he can go" when Miles was crawling away while we were eating lunch on a sidewalk in our neighborhood. I was also the one present when he fell down the stairs and when his face met the sidewalk this weekend. I don't even think it's that I'm not paying attention. It's almost purposeful neglect. And by that I mean, I don't want to be the thing that prevents Miles from exploring his world in every way possible. Unfortunately that means he'll explore his world with the taste of blood in his mouth at times.

Here are pictures of my precious independent baby boy this week: