11 Months Old

Oliver turned 11 months old a week ago.  I can't believe he is going to be a year old in 3 weeks!  This year has flown by.  

Oliver woke up a little cranky the other day and nothing was making him happy.  So, I plopped him in the bean bag chair and turned on some Elmo, and he was a happy guy.  (It wasn't worth the battle to get his pants back on after the diaper change.)

This past month, he started walking all over the place.  He is getting pretty fast.  But, he is also still getting lots of bruises on his face as he walks into things.  He loves to carry a straw around.  I know you wouldn't guess it from the picture below.  But, he drooling so much less.  I usually don't have to keep a bib on him anymore.  

He wants to keep up with all the big kids at the park.  He can climb up the stairs and go down the slide, on his belly, all by himself.  He loves to climb back up the slide as well.  

He loves to play with the phone.  He has deleted our answering machine message and has left the phone "off the hook" for over an hour before I realized it.  He holds the phone up to his ear when we say, "hello".  And sometimes, even a fish can be a phone.  

I feel like this past month has been a big one for Oliver. 

~He is walking, as I have already said.

~He does the signs for eat and milk.  And will go stand in front of the cabinets that we keep the bottles in and do the sign for milk.  

~He is mostly down to 1, 3-4 hour nap a day.  And he sleeps about 12 hours at night.  

~He still drinks his 4, 8oz bottles a day.  Although, he just switched to milk instead of formula.  We ran out of formula and just went with it.  He didn't even act like he noticed a difference.  He will not drink it out of a sippy cup though.  He will take a few sips and then spit most of it back out.  So, we will keep working on that.  

~He says, "wah"(Whoa) and "uh" (uh oh).  He has also made the sounds for fire truck (woo oo) and a train (ch ch).

~He is usually a great eater and easily eats more than Madeline.  His favorite foods are grilled cheese, hot dogs, pb and j, green beans, apples, grapes, pretzels, cheerios, zucchini and corn.  But, he usually eats whatever we put in front of him, except for tacos.

~He got strep for the 3rd time this past month.  But, he is finally clear of it and we are hoping he doesn't get it again or he will most likely have to visit an ear, nose and throat doctor.  

~He loves playing with Madeline and she is usually extremely sweat to him and wants to help him.  If he wakes up first in the morning, he waits by her door for her to get up.  

~He is always excited to hear daddy unlocking the door at the end of the day and quickly walks to go greet him.  

~His favorite game is peek-a-boo.  When I lay him down for naps or bedtime, he covers his face with his blanket and waits for me to say, "Where's Oliver?".  Then he pulls the blanket down and gets really happy when I say, "peek-a-boo, there he is!"  He also likes to play peek-a-boo behind furniture.

~He definitely has a temper.  Whenever you take something away from him, he throws himself on the floor and throws a fit.  We're still trying to figure out how to fix that one.

When he doesn't have something being taken away from him, he's usually a happy guy that loves his big sister, farm toys, balls and balloons.  We love this little guy so much and are so excited to celebrate his 1st birthday in less than a month!