10

In honor of the Charlie-buggles turning 10 months old, here are 10 random things about our boy:

1. He thinks the 4 o'clock hour is morning. He's wrong, but we're having a hard time convincing him of that.

2. Charlie appears to have had a growth spurt in the last month. He weighed 17 lbs 5 oz at his nine-month appointment, and when we weighed him last weekend using our friends' baby scale, he was 19 lbs 5 oz! He had pjs and a clean diaper on, but still - that's a big change. We may need to graduate to the bigger carseat soon, which I think we may do anyway since he's getting way too heavy to lug around in the infant seat.

3. Charlie's head/scalp is apparently quite sensitive. He rubs his head when he is drinking his bottle. He always has - he did the same thing when he was nursing, although that was usually both hands. When he's laying on his back, his head goes back and forth, checking out whatever surface is beneath him. He'll even rub his head on your chin when you're holding him. And when he was given a sheer scarf to play peek-a-boo with at our ECFE class, he put it on his head and just rubbed it back and forth. :)

4. Charlie doesn't seem to have stranger or separation anxiety, and never really has. When I drop him off at the day care at the Y, he's as happy as can be. So I had to laugh when we were at the Y the other day, and I was sitting on a bench giving Charlie his bottle. To entertain himself, Zach started running up and down the stairs directly in front of us. The first time, no reaction from Charlie. The second time, he started to cry as soon as Zach headed away from us. Really cry - which he almost never does! So I guess he'll only have separation anxiety when he's separated from his brother.

5. Charlie loves his crib. When I lay him down, he gives a happy little wiggle, especially in anticipation of his blanket and his little froggy (frog-bungadee!). Then he flings his arm up, turns his head, and talks himself to sleep.

6. This boy still loves to eat, but he struggles a bit with any finger food that doesn't easily dissolve in his mouth. We have to be careful how much of certain kinds of food we give him, because he'll put it all in his mouth at once and then get frustrated when he chews and chews and chews, his little mouth full, without much progress. And the whole time he's making this frustrated mmmmmm sound. Despite all that, he still hasn't met a food he didn't like!

7. Charlie thinks sippy cups are funny. Don't ask me why.

8. Our boy is getting to be quite the chatterbox - he babbles pretty much nonstop. And his volume appears to be increasing with his size. The other day I did something I rarely do - took the boys to a department store. Zach was walking away from the stroller, and then running full speed straight at Charlie. The result was an amazingly piercing, loud squeal. We weren't in the store long.

9. Charlie has reached the not-fun stage where he's just frustrated all the time at the things he wants to do but can't, physically. He WANTS to crawl, but hasn't figured out he needs to keep his knees bent and his arms braced. He WANTS to go forward, but instead when he's on his belly he just slides backward. He WANTS to walk, but falls when he lets go of our hands. Frankly, this boy just wants to get down and do everything his brother does, and you can actually see the frustration on his face. He ends up doing things like flinging himself down out of my arms; when he's standing letting go and then grabbing my fingers again, reaching for me then wiggling away, etc etc. He just can't figure out exactly what he wants, and it's driving both of us crazy!

10. Charlie doesn't move around much in his crib. We stopped swaddling him a few months ago to give him some more freedom, but he continues to pull at least one leg up into his sleeper at some point in the night. So he wakes up looking a lot like a calf that's been roped and tied in a rodeo. The crib is such a safe place to explore, practice sitting up and pulling himself up (he can pull himself up on low things like the side of a laundry basket, but has no luck with furniture), but I have no idea how to get him to stop with the leg! His sleepers fit him perfectly - and they're a size 6 months!