11 months

Dear Cooper,

On May 8th, Mother’s Day this year, you turned 11 months old!

This month has been a little rough on you.  You got 3 teeth (all on the bottom), and are currently working on a forth.

In addition to teething, you also got sick for the first time.  And, of course, that happened during the first time I was away from you.  I was out of town for a week for work, and Daddy had to take care of you all by himself.  Poor Daddy and poor Buddy.  The doctor said you just had a cold or allergies and there was really not much we could do for you. :(

Not to worry; that cold didn’t stop you from getting in to any- and everything around the house!  You sure do keep us on our toes!  It seems like overnight, you became so adventurous and not afraid to get into EVERYthing.  This month, you started full on crawling, not just army crawling like you have been for a few months; although you do prefer to army crawl on the wood floors.  You save the real deal for carpeted areas.

You pull up on everything.  If I’m standing up and you’re nearby, I can bet that you’ll come over and try to scale my legs.  You also love to pull up on the tv stand and try and pull down the sound bar.  You know that you’re not supposed to though, and you will crawl towards it, sit down and look at us, then get up and crawl the rest of the way, and reach up while looking at us.  Seriously?  I thought you’d be at least a couple of years old before you start that business!

You graduated from the ducky tub (sad face) and you now get to take your bath in the big tub with toys!  You love it, and many evenings we cannot get you to stop splashing!  You have always loved to splash so hard in the water.

You cruise around furniture and try to use the wall to help you walk when there is no furniture to steady yourself.  You would love for us to walk you around all day long.  You occasionally get too brave, which has resulted in a lot of falls and bumps on the head recently.  So sad.

You’ve discovered that the gates around the house are to keep you out of anything that is fun, and unfortunately for us, you quickly learned how to move those gates and get to wherever you want!

You have started refusing your formula over the past several weeks.  You will drink very little of it before shoving it away.  We’ve tried changing brands, but you still refuse it.  Maybe you’ve developed your taste buds a little and discovered that it doesn’t actually taste good?  Either way, the doctor doesn’t seem too concerned.  You currently eat 3-4 meals a day, and we attempt 3 bottles/sippy cups of formula, but you rarely drink more than a few ounces.  I think we may switch to milk soon, because formula is quite an expensive thing to waste!

We went to the doctor when you first showed signs of being sick (a fever of 103!) and there you weighed 21 pounds 3 ounces.  You wear size 4 diapers, and 6-12 month clothes.  I briefly thought that you were outgrowing those, and bought a ton of 12-18 month summer clothes, which turned out to be huge on you!  Hopefully you will grow (at least somewhat) into them over the summer.  You’re wearing a size 4.5 shoe.

This month, you discovered the dogs.  The poor, poor dogs.  You chase them around the house.  You corner them when you’re in your walker.  You pull their hair (trying to work on that…)  Zoe is very wary of you (smart girl), but Isabelle is such a lover, she can’t help herself.  She loves to lick you, and you find that hilarious!  You still love Zoe’s yellow ball, and she now thinks that you are playing with her when you have it.  She always waits patiently for you to throw it.  Which, of course, you do not do.  You put that dirty thing right in your mouth.  I cringe.

And, just in case, we weren’t quite sure how happy that ball made you, I caught this on camera :) I may or may not have contemplated getting you one of your own….

I can’t believe that you are almost a year old!  Let’s make this next month go by really slowly, okay?

I love you sweet boy!

Mama