Nekkid

Just some quality Donovan pictures from after today's bath. We give him some naked time between toweling off and lotioning so that he can get totally dry and he loves it! Unfortunately, he often takes this time to pull all of his books off his shelves and then pee on them but books can be wiped off and he loves naked time so we just take our chances.

New accomplishment

Guess what Donovan did last night while mommy was at work? He climbed all the way up the stairs all by himself! Daddy was supervising of course but he said he didn't help him at all. Apparently Petey was up at the top of the stairs and was a pretty good motivating factor for Donovan. I miss all the good stuff!

10 month blanket pics

Ok so I thought I would give it another shot before I hit the sack and tada! It worked (see first paragraph in the next post to see what I am talking about). Here is our big boy! He actually cooperated this month!

Donovan's Ten!

Ten months that is! We took Dono's 10 month pictures today but I can't get them to download so I will have to wait for Tom to be awake and have him try. Look for those tomorrow if everything cooperates.

To celebrate this big day, daddy worked from home today so he could spend extra time with Donovan. Donovan even got to help his daddy work a little! I am sure Tom enjoyed it :)


I have a longer blog entry planned on all things Donovan loves right now but that is for later in the week and seeing as though it is late I will just do a quick update on what Donovan is doing as a big 10 month old now.

We have gotten him down to only 4 bottles a day, each of them 6 ounces except the last which is 8 ounces before bed. He gets 3 solid meals a day; 3 tbs. cereal and a tub of stage 2 fruit for breakfast, a stage 3 meat/veggie for lunch, and a tub of veggies and a tub of fruit for dinner. We give him lots of finger foods in addition at every meal, his favorites being anything carb related: Cheerios, lil' crunchies, crackers. He also eats American cheese regularly for lunch and dinner, but we cannot get him to eat any fruits or veggies in bite sized pieces. He gets them in his mouth and then spits or gags them out. I think it is the texture. Also we are offering him water from a sippy cup at every meal. We only do it at meals because he does not get how to work the no-spill sippy cups that he has to suck from, so we take those pieces out which makes for a very wet drinking session. He also will not hold his own bottle or sippy cup which I know he knows how to do (at least for the bottle) which is pretty silly. He just lays his head back and opens his mouth like a little prince saying "Ok you may feed me now". We are going to be working on motivating him to hold his own bottle very soon so hopefully we will have different news to report this time next month.

As far as sleeping goes, no complaints here. Naps are better, he does two a day and at least one is over an hour (unless he is at his grammy's, then all bets are off). He is usually in bed anywhere between 9 and 9:45 depending on the day. I would love to get him to bed at 9 every night but it usually just depends on his last nap as to when we can get him down and often it leads us to a later time. He usually gets up for his first feeding anywhere from 5 to 6:45 then goes back to sleep until 9 or 9:30.

For activity he is just about as close as you can be to walking without any interest in walking by himself. What I mean by that is he pulls up and cruises around on everything. He walks along very steadily and can quickly get where he wants to go as long as he has a hand on something solid. As soon as you take both of his hands in yours to encourage him to walk he fusses, pulls his hands out of yours, and tries to sit down so he can crawl. Cheater. In the last few days I have got him to let go where he is holding on to something and reach for me and walk a few steps to me. It is too funny because when he walks around the furniture he walks so naturally but when he walks to me it is these tiny Frankenstein steps that makes me laugh out loud. Have I mentioned how much I love this boy? So anyways, we still have a while to go on the walking. As soon as he realizes how much quicker he can get to things with walking it will be all over so I should enjoy this reluctance while it lasts.

Donovan is still just saying derivatives of "dada", "baba", and "yaya". He such an expressive kid, and I know he has lots to say so I can't wait for him to be able to actually communicate what he is currently trying to "tell" us with all his talking.

Thats all the updates for now. I need to go to bed anyways as I work tomorrow. It gets harder and harder to go to work everyday becasuse Donovan is so fun. I miss him every second that I am not with him. Tom and I tell him that he is our best friend and I mean it is every sense of the word. He is the best! I love you Donovan man!

Hanging out

Hanging out, looking cute with my Aunt Jenna on Saturday.

Tooth proof

My dad was in town visiting us from Wed. until yesterday and during his visit we managed to use his photographic abilities and get some proof of the teeth that Donovan has sprouted. He now has two, both on the bottom, but they are both pretty little still so getting them on film has been hard. Here's what we got...

First, some pictures of the teeth and a sad Donovan.




If you click on the 3rd picture and enlarge it you can see the teeth pretty good. Unfortunately while my dad was in, Donovan was having a crabby phase. He did not want to do anything other than be held by his mommy or daddy. So Grandpa got to see lots of these sad faces.

On rare moments, like the ones captured below in the bath, we did get to see the happy Donovan that we all know and love.



Again, if you enlarge the pictures you can see the teeth pretty well.

My 2 favorite Donovan clothes items

1) His winter hat





2) His ankle socks

Can you spot the difference?

Something is different with Donovan... can you spot the difference?

Although the overalls are new (and cute) that is not what I am talking about. The difference is that you are looking at the new proud owner of a TOOTH! Ok, so you can't see it (we barely can after wrestling with him) but it is exciting non-the less.

Donovan has been a little more cranky lately, nothing too big but we were attributing it to a cold that he caught last week. In the back of our minds we were hoping that part of the crabbiness was due to an erupting tooth but I could never feel any bumps or see any other warning signs and as I did not get my first tooth until 11 months, we were not holding our breath. Today I was off work and Donovan was a little crabbier than usual and was also really into chewing on anything hard he could get his hands on. So when we went downstairs to play in the afternoon I thought I would just see if I could feel any bumps on his gums and low and behold I felt something sharp! It is barely above surface level but it is through the gum so it is official. The left lower tooth has erupted! It will be quite sometime before we get a picture of it though so you will just have to take our word for it for now.

Here are some more pictures I took of Donovan tonight in is overalls with his new tooth.


Donovan likes to help his daddy play guitar. He's pretty good at it.

Mmmm. Guitars feel good on my new tooth!


PS. Donovan also stood for about 7 seconds without holding onto anything! He was chewing on a toy and didn't realize I had moved his support (my knee). As soon as he realized he wasn't near anything to catch himself he flopped down on his butt. Silly.

9 months old

Believe it or not, this was the best picture we got for the 9 month shot...


And here are the out-takes.




This month has been a very fun and active one in our household. I have many topics to touch on so lets begin with the exciting things that have happened this past month.

1)Freckle- Donovan has his first freckle and it is adorable! I noticed it on his right shoulder during a bath a few weeks ago and after a little scrubbing determined that no, infact it was not dirt, and yes, in fact it was his very first freckle. It is about the size of a pinhead so you really have to squint to see it but I know it is there and I love it. Tom has tons of freckles on his shoulders and back and I have always loved them so I would not mind if Donovan got that trait for his daddy.

2)Dada- Donovan is officially saying "Dada"! I don't think he associates it with Tom but then again I didn't think he would repeat it if he heard it until 2 days ago when he did just that so who knows. He first said it last friday (the 15th) when Tom was at work (unfortunately) and is getting better and better at saying it more often ever since. He has said "Yaya" for a while and now also says "baba". He has always been a talker but his talking is usually just grunts and various funny noises or squeals so I was worried that he was never going to start saying all those cute baby words but last friday that all changed. It is funny how one day the light switches on and then they never look back. He can talk all he wants, I love hearing anything that comes out of his mouth.

3)Cruising- So the fact that he is pulling up is old news but now he is starting to walk along holding onto things. Mostly he does this around our couches and the ottoman and he is doing it more and more every day. His balance is so much better than it used to be too. He used to look like a little hula dancer when he was first standing by himself, but now he only looks like that when he is really excited and is "dancing". Now he will pull up using only one hand so he can use the other to carry a toy and then he will stand holding on with only one hand too. Occasionally he will let go for a second and he will stand perfectly fine until he realizes he is not holding onto anything, then he grabs hurriedly at the nearest object to hold onto.

4)Eating and sleeping schedules- Donovan still does not have a schedule per se, for when he sleeps and eats each day but we do have a good pattern going. Beginning from when he wakes up for the day you can count on putting him down for a nap 3 hours later. And he usually drinks a bottle every 4ish hours. The actual times change each day because he still goes to bed at different times (anywhere between 8:30 to 9:30) and wakes up at different times (usally he wakes for a first bottle anywhere from 4:30-7:15, however generally between 6-7). His naps were 1,000% better during the majority of the last month, lasting usually at least an hour... occasionally even two but the last few days he has gone back to his 30 minute max naps. Oh how I hope we get the long ones back! When he does the long ones, we only do two and it seems to work out better for our schedules, plus I get more done and get to take naps myself! I did forget to mention that between the last nap and when he goes down to sleep for the night he does usually stay up for longer, sometimes close to 5 hours! He is a crazy boy!

5)Playing with Petey- Donovan recently has also realized how he can get more attention from Petey. Petey has this little toy carrot that he is obsessed with, so Donovan knows that if he gets Petey's carrot and holds onto it, there is a good chance Petey will come and try to get it out of his hand. Then when Petey gets it and runs away he just smiles and laughs. He is just so happy that Petey was close to him for that little bit. Also if you take Petey's carrot and squeek it as you are poking Donovan in the stomach, he giggles and giggles. He thinks it is hilarious and so do we.

6)Blowing lips- For some reason Donovan has developed a habit of moving air in and out of his lips noiselessly and it is so cute. He just sucks in, and then blows out...little lips flapping away the whole time. It is hard to describe, it is just better if we demonstrate it for you or you see it yourself so you will just have to take my word for it, it is so silly and funny.

Enough talking, onto the pictures.

Donovan and Mommy in our PJs.

Looking out the window- his favorite thing recently since it is too cold to actually go outside. On yeah, and licking the window isn't so bad either.




Happy 9 month birthday Donovan, I love you!

9 month Dr's check up

Today we had Donovan's 9 month doctors visit. And the stats are... (drumroll please)

Head: 18 and a half inches- 95th percentile
Height: 29 and 1/4 inches- 92nd percentile
Weight: 22lbs- 88th percentile

The doctor was impressed when we told her that Donovan is crawling all over the place and pulling up and starting to cruise. Other than that the visit was very uneventful. Donovan would probably beg to differ though as he was traumatized from the shot and finger prick they had to do today. I think the worst part of the finger stick was that the nurse was restricting his hand for about a minute and he does NOT like it when he can't wiggle away. It was sad, he had multiple tears coming out of each eye. Not to worry though, 3 minutes after the pricks he forgot all about what had just happened. The nice part of the visit though was that Tom was able to leave work early so he was able to join us for only the second time since Donovan was born (since I work only 3 days a week I usually just take him myself early in the day). It was nice to have Tom there for help and extra moral support.

On a disappointing note todays visit pretty much confirmed what I have been thinking for a while now in that we need to find a different pediatrician. I chose our ped. as she was my sister and my ped. from when we were young until we turned 18. I remember thinking of her so fondly and I was so excited that we were going to use her for Donovan. However, ever since the first visit I feel like I leave there with more questions than I came with. I just don't think she listens as much as we need her too, especially about the sleep issues that we still have with Donovan. She has a quick answer for everything and it feels as though when you are trying to explain what is going on she starts talking over you to solve it before all the details are even discussed. And I always feel like our visit is rushed and I need more time. I have been feeling this way for a while but having Tom there and having him feel the same thing just solidified the fact that we need to find someone we love. There are plenty of pediatricians out there so there is no reason that we need to stay somewhere where we leave unhappy. Part of me is sad to leave her, but I think that we should love our ped. and as of now and the last 9 months, we don't. I would like to find someone we rave about to other people and that I want to take all of my future children too.

On a happier note here are some recent pictures of little man man...

Some playtime in his diaper.


Looking out the sliding glass door. I love how he sits back on his legs and just takes it all in.

Another extreeme close up. I get a lot of these since he tries to eat the camera every time I get it out.

This is my attempt to get a picture of Donovan croutching by his kitchen. His kitchen has a light and he croutches down (when he is standing) so that he can look up at it. It is so cute and he does it so controlled nowadays.

And finally, sometimes the best toys aren't toys at all.