Well, ten months has come and gone and it is truly frightening how quickly the time has passed! He now has 4 teeth -- his two lower central incisors and his top two lateral incisors. As his top two were coming in he also came down with a pretty bad cold; which also happened to be three days before Christmas. It was really hard seeing our usually super-energetic and independent little guy be so stuffed up, snotty, coughy and needy. You want to fix it but you know it just has to run its course. And, even those who saw him on his worst days said that he was the "happiest sick kid" they had ever seen. We truly lucked out with this happy-go-lucky little man.
He has definitely been growing, although it is more length-wise rather than weight-wise. people often think that he might be older than he is based on his size. We have no idea, to be honest, since we don't have anyone to compare him to. But looking back on his old pictures, as well as comparing him to the newest member of the family, Mr. Caleb, who was born on Nov. 29th, we can for sure say that he seems gigantic these days! :)
We have been spending lots of time playing, cruising along the furniture, reading books, practicing walking, crawling, army crawling, being in nature and about 500 other activities every day! :) He learned how to stand up in his crib this past month and that has been fun but also presents some challenges when it comes to nap times. He has recently become much more confident in his ability to go from standing to sitting, but has not seemed to master that skill in his crib. Between the cold, the teething and his new found ability to stand up in his crib (and look out the windows), his nap schedule has not been going as smoothly as it had been. He sometimes plays through his entire afternoon nap and has also passed on his morning nap. This makes for an interesting day and usually a fussy bedtime and night wakings. He had been sleeping a solid 12-13 hours at night but has been waking up a bit more than usual recently. Hopefully this will all pass soon!
He is sooo very close to walking on his own. He walks pretty well while just holding onto one of our fingers, particularly if there is a dog he can walk chase after! He is just very hesitant to give up that other hand! He can balance for a little bit of time on his own, until he realizes that you aren't letting him lean against you anymore. It will be very exciting when he gets the confidence to take those first steps!
I've also been trying to use instagram a little bit more (ashleighr22). I like it. I don't always share my pictures over on the book face because I don't want to be that annoying person who posts pictures of their awesome kid every single day, but it seems much more socially acceptable on the 'gram! :)
The little dude got to celebrate his very first Christmas this year! That was pretty exciting! Unfortunately, he was a snot-nosed mess. But he was a total trooper. He participated in our annual Christmas Eve party at our house and then went to both sets of grandparents' houses on Christmas day. He even helped put out some nutmeg logs for Santa on his plate that my mom made him (check it out in the picture below) on Christmas Eve! We changed up the usual routine a bit to make our lives a little easier and we all went to Jeff and Jill's house for Christmas dinner rather than us going back and forth between our parents' houses throughout the day. We still did gift opening at both places and to say that he was spoiled is such an understatement; it's not even funny. We were all more than spoiled, to be completely honest. It was a great day, despite the terrible cold that he had. I can only imagine that next year will be so much different when he is nearly two years old! Overall, his first Christmas was a day filled with fun, family and lots of love! :)
On another Christmas note...all the kids got Jill Broncos tickets for Christmas! She had never been to a game, even though she is one of their biggest fans! Finn captured the priceless moment of her opening the gift on camera and I thought you'd all love to see it!!
As usual, our month was pretty full of activities. But, one of the more stressful but also exciting things that happened to me was that I traveled to some of our study sites for work and we are finally getting our study kicked off after a couple years in planning mode! I also ate some good food, and drank some beer that I liked and nearly broke my finger in a rental car trunk. It was a great trip. Finn got to help me put together the dog saliva collection kits for one of our sites this month and he was the best assistant money couldn't buy!!
I would like to say I will blog again before next month, but it seems pretty unlikely. I'm in my FINAL (yahoo!) semester of grad school and work is getting busier everyday and Dempsey moves about 100mph 90% of the time....soooo yeah...see you all next month!! :)
Love and Kisses,
