Well, I totally missed month 10 for poor little Charlie and here we are at month 11. Only a month until the big 1st birthday. I can't believe it! He's still such a baby to me. I felt like Will was so mature at this point. It definitely puts it in perspective now that I have a preschooler to compare him to. High points on the Charlie front:
1. He now has two teeth: both of his bottom middle ones.
2. He's starting to rebel against baby food. This is a problem, though, since he only has two half-teeth. He's eating a lot of puffs and bits of banana at this point.
3. He's been "crawling" for about a month now. I'm using this term loosely, though, since it's not traditional crawling. It's more of a scoot. Or maybe a drag. I'm not really sure what to call it. He basically uses his hands (like in normal crawling), but instead of using his knees he propels himself forward with one foot and just drags the other leg underneath him. It's pretty effective so I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't ever bother to actually crawl normally.
4. He's not pulling up yet and pretty much never stands. Not sure what's up with that. He can do it. I've seen him. He'll stand and play if there's something he deems worth the effort. Most of the time when I stand him up, though, he just plops himself right back to his butt.
5. The last 2-3 weeks of sleeping have been TERRIBLE. I think he's slept through the night maybe twice during this time. There have been several nights where he's up multiple times or is up for hours at a time. I've done a lot of sleeping on his bedroom floor. Not sure what's going on. I've blamed it on everything: teeth, ears, growth spurt. I still haven't figured out what's causing it. Maybe there just isn't a cause. I just hope it stops soon.
6. He loves to wave. He waves at everyone, but rarely at the appropriate times :-) He also claps a lot.
7. He's starting to talk. I think. He's at that stage where every once in awhile he'll say something and you're 99% sure that he said it, but then he doesn't do it again for 2 weeks so you question whether you actually heard it or if it was a fluke. Like he'll hear Tim and say "Da Da". Or he'll drop something and say "Uh-Oh". Or he'll see you and say "hi". He still calls me "Nuh-nuh".
Charlie's favorite pastimes right now:
1. Pulling everything out of the kitchen cabinets
2. Chasing the cats
3. Trying to get into whatever Will is playing with
Sibling rivalry has definitely set in. Charlie wants to do everything Will is doing. Will gets annoyed and pushes him or yells in his face or hits him. Sometimes Will wants to play with him, but that usually ends in him being too rough with Charlie and hurting him. Another new "game" Will likes to play is to taunt Charlie with a toy. He holds it up and when Charlie tries to get it he screams "No Charlie" in his face and grabs it away It's exhausting.
Will started preschool a few weeks ago. He's done great so far. The jury is still out on his teacher. She hardly talks, even when I ask her about how he's doing. I don't need a huge amount of communication, but I would at least like to know if he had a good or bad day. Either she has some kind of social anxiety or she just hates me and/or my kid. One of my friend's little boys is also in the class and she said she's having the same issue so at least it's not just me. I guess that's just how she is. Or maybe she just hates boys. He seems OK with going, though, and I trust the school. I guess I'm just going to have to press her to be more communicative.
We're finally making some progress on potty training. YAY!!! He's pretty much completely trained from a pee standpoint. We're still have some accidents when he gets really busy playing and doesn't remember/want to stop playing. I have to stay on top of him about it. Those really only consist of him peeing a little bit in his underwear and then making it to the bathroom for the rest so it's nothing major. He even stays dry at nap. He's dry most mornings too, but I've still been putting him in diapers overnight. He's stayed dry at school every time I've sent him too. Poop is another story, though. Let's just say I've been spending a lot of time scraping poo out of under-roos and it's one of the least enjoyable things I've ever done. I have no idea how to fix this. He refuses to go on the potty. I would be Ok with this (temporarily) if he would at least notify me and ask for a pull-up or diaper. Instead he just goes in his pants. And the worst part of it is that he seems to see no problem with it.
I've just committed to a big project for my business and my babysitter up and quit, which is adding a LOT of stress right now. Charlie is NOT ready to go into any type of daycare situation, nor do I want to put him there anyway. Plus, I'm not sure how that would work with Will's preschool schedule. It's just really hard to find anyone. This project is big enough that I can't do what needs to be done in my down time (especially since Charlie only naps sporadically which means there isn't much downtime to begin with) so I need some kind of solution. I'm just really picky about who I leave them with and it's hard to find the right person. Being sleep deprived is really not helping with my coping skills either.
