Reporting at Ten Months

Joseph is ten months old today and this always seems to me an absolutely delightful age! Babies this age are starting to do interesting things, they are interacting (at least non-verbally), and they're sweet, generally not throwing toddler tantrums yet.

After a rocky start with solids--during which I was nervous because of Joseph's tongue tie and initial month being exclusively bottle-fed--he has taken off with solids! He was my first baby to really feed commercial baby foods at every meal because I wanted to see if it would help him learn how to swallow, which I believe it did. In fact, I think last week might have been the last week I buy baby foods of any substance because experiments reveal that Joseph can now eat table foods! This week, he ate successfully roughly diced noodles with vodka sauce, pretzels, graham crackers, and a pizza crust. If he can eat food with that much texture, I can probably feed him off my plate at most meals with a little adaptation. Yay, Joseph!

Joseph still gets the vast majority of his calories from nursing day and night, but he does bang on the table at meals if he sees others eating solids and he is not being served.

Joseph can easily climb the two stairs out of our sunken den. And, apparently, he can climb an entire flight of stairs, as reported by his big brother. I was tending to some immediate need with one of the girls and asked John to watch Joseph for a few minutes. When I returned, I heard their voices upstairs in the bonus room. I quickly thanked Joseph's guardian angel and went upstairs, thinking to scold John for carrying the baby up the stairs. But John reported that Joseph crawled his entire way up, with John following one step behind him to catch him. (I told him still please don't do that quite yet!)

Joseph pulls up on all furniture and now cruises along, although he has not yet transferred from one piece of furniture to an adjacent piece. John reports to me that Joseph let go and stood unassisted for a second yesterday.

Our other babies were walking within their eleventh month, but I don't think Joseph will make quite that much progress in only the next four weeks. However, he might surprise us!

Joseph remains notably calm and good-natured. He is an easy baby to care for because the rewards of a laugh and smile are immediate.