10 Months Old!

Lucas,
On Saturday you turned 10 months old. We can't believe you are in double digits and were born last year. You are now 20 lbs 4 oz. You still wear mostly 9 month clothes or the 6-12 month size in Gap though you are moving into the 12 month clothes.

You are still loving food and love that you can feed yourself some of your meal. You tend to shovel food in your mouth like we may never feed you again. It is adorable and very messy because a lot of it still ends up on your lap/floor/highchair. You have also started purposely dropping your sippy cup on the ground. You look at us, hold the cup over the ground and drop it. When we don't react you look down at it like "hey, do you see the cup on the ground?":)

Your personality is coming through but we can't quite put a description on it. You are curious, odd, extremely happy, reserved around new people coming up to you but smiley at strangers just passing by. There isn't a day that we go out where someone doesn't say what a happy baby you are. You definitely like being out and about better than at the house for long periods so we go on at least one "adventure" a day. We regularly go to story time at the library, the park (you LOVE the park!) and swim class.

We also take a walk around the neighborhood almost daily on your new trike that you got from Grammi for Christmas. You think you are pretty cool in this thing.

If Daddy gets off of work early enough and on the weekends we usually take a long walk on the coast. Half of the time its to Mavericks and you like that because you get to get out and play on the beach.

We went to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party and you quite enjoyed yourself.

A new friend of yours was born whom I'm sure we are going to spend a lot of time with so it is a good thing you guys hit it off:)

We took a trip into the city one day. We took BART in and you loved it! The noise, people and dark did not scare you one bit. You thought the whole thing was so exciting. You smiled and laughed the whole time.

Your 49ers made it into the playoffs which was very exciting! But sadly we lost right before the SuperBowl and you were not too happy.

You went to your first Mavericks competition and we had a great time. We had a picnic while watching the waves and you smiled at every passerby and screamed at every dog. It was a perfect mommy/son day.

You went to your first birthday party. You were hesitant at first but then Audri's smiley face got you going and you enjoyed every minute of it. It made Daddy and I realize how much you do need to be around other kids as much as possible.

You are very intrigued by teeny tiny things. If there is a piece of dust on the floor you will find it and there always is. You touch it with your pointer finger. You love things that you can point at with your little finger. This includes Mama's eyelashes. Oh how you love to poke at Mama's eyelashes!

You could spend an hour, or more, opening and closing books and turning their pages. I don't know if this a developmental thing that babies do or if it is just you but my goodness you love your books. Seriously, if we need to get something done all we have to do is give you some books and you are good to go!

You love animals. Whenever you see animals, real or fake, you get so excited. We promise we will get you a doggy soon but until then the birds in our trees and other people's cats and dogs will have to do.

Heather, I promise Kevin immediately stopped Lucas after he did this but you are right your cat is a trooper!

The other thing that gets you as excited as animals is when you are with just one of us and then we say "Who is that? Who's coming?" or "Let's go get Mommy/Daddy". You scream with excitement, kick your legs and grab our fingers so that you can walk over to whomever it is you are going to find. That's where the excitement ends though. Once you get to us you have no idea what to do. You go from one extreme to the other during this time which makes us laugh so much. Boy do you love when Daddy gets home though and you are really enjoying your time with him.

People still comment on your eyes all the time. We don't know if they'll stay non-brown but for now they are a version of gray, blue or blue hazel.

You are now sitting up in your crib when you wake up or are refusing to go to sleep. You have only stood up once, thank goodness, but I have a feeling there will probably be more of that soon.

The biggest thing that happened this past month though is you took your first steps on January 16! You were standing, holding on to one of your toys and you just let go and walked to the sliding glass door. I was in shock (and scared…glass doors and hardwood floors). I thought I would have control over when this first happened but nope, you wanted to stand at the door. You are very cautious about walking so you will look all around for us to grab on to or an object to hold to first but if there isn't one in your path you will take your steps. I think we have a few more weeks before you are full on walking because of how cautious you are (this may or may not be due to the bloody lips and bumps on your head from our hardwood floors) and that is fine with us. No need to grow up too fast.

Capturing the evening you took your first steps.

Oh, son, we love you so much and are having the best times of our lives with you. We thank you each day for choosing us as your parents.

We love you so much!

Mommy and Daddy

9 Months Old!

Dear Lucas,

You turned 9 months old on Christmas! We can't believe you're already 9 months. You are 19 lbs 9 oz (50th %), 29" tall (62nd %) and your head is 18" around (88th %). You are now just average on your weight. You still look a bit chunky but your midsection has thinned out quite a bit. It makes us kind of sad that you are not our fat little monster anymore but you are still one healthy baby!

You are eating solids three times a day but we would like it if you ate a little more at each sitting.

You love all foods but you seem to get over it quickly. We finally felt comfortable enough to give you finger foods and you LOVE this! You think you are such a big boy. This has also helped with meals because you will sit and eat for 1/2 an hour without a peep if there is still food in front of you for you to grab. The first time we did this, you had soft carrots, we were so proud, you just gobbled every bit up! Or so we thought. Once we took you out of your highchair about 90% of the carrots were on your lap or chair:)

During the day you nurse every 3 hours. You are still waking up twice a night to eat but now that you are 9 months old you are a big boy and you should only have to eat once at night so the next few weeks are going to be a rough transition but hopefully you catch on fast…I'm rooting for you! You are back to taking three naps a day, about an hour each nap. You celebrated your first Thanksgiving this past month.

You did so well with all of the family around. After two days though you were over it. We tried taking you to a friend's party and you said no way! I need my space! This started your time of really just wanting to be with your parents. You became very clingy and not really wanting other people to hold you but this is completely normal for your age. If I am holding you and we are out people always comment on what a happy baby you are. And you really are. You always give everyone a smile and they love it.

We did have a play date with one of mommy's friends from high school and her beautiful daughter but I forgot to take any pictures. We just had too much fun! We went to a Gymboree class and you did like all the things you could play on.  Two days later was my birthday and you started a pretty nasty cough. (I blame Gymboree.)

Wonderful first time parents that we are we didn't realize you were sick until we got to the freezing cold city but you were a champ. You loved looking at all the lights and decorations that were around and you let mommy celebrate her day with a fabulous dinner. The same week that you were sick your top teeth started to break through. Your top left one broke through the gums on Dec. 10 but your right didn't break through until the 25th.

This was one tough teething month. It was very painful! You are continuing your swim lessons. For the most part you still enjoy this but you are not too fond of your teaching holding you right now. You would prefer to just stay in my arms.

We also go to story time at the library once a week and you are so fascinated by all the kids and love listening to all the stories and songs.

You still won't crawl.

You get on your arms while on your stomach and then pull your feet up like an A and try to inch worm places. You would so prefer to stand and walk. You can move all over the place if you have something to hold on to.

Your favorite thing right now is to hold our fingers and walk all over the house. You get so excited. It is adorable! You can stand on your own for about 10-20 seconds and then you'll look for our hand to hold or you just sit down. Your doctor thinks you will be walking by 10 months. We shall see! You love to bite Daddy's toes when he is wearing socks. You're an odd one but we still love you;)

You met Santa! And you didn't cry! It all happened really fast but we got our picture:)

I didn't know that we would be seeing Santa so you weren't exactly dressed the way I would have imagined for your first meeting but what are you going to do?

You also celebrated your first Christmas. It was so much fun to have a little one around. Everything excited you and we know that you are going to love Christmas as much as Mama does!

We had to get a Christmas family pic but you are on the move now and getting you to stay still in our arms for a picture is hard. We did it though!

We love you so much and every day you seem to show us something new. Thank you for bringing such light into our life!
Love,
Mommy and Daddy