The Journey Continues: Ten Months!

Our little man turned 10 months old yesterday and I can hardly believe it! It has been a good month and Jesse is changing and growing so much. I love seeing him discover new things. I feel like we have established a really nice routine over the past month, since Jesse finally went down to just two naps a day last month.

New things at 10 months:

He pulls up on everything he possibly can and cruises around all our furniture. He learned very quickly how to get himself back down, so we have had very few falls, except for the times when he has decided to just let go completely. He will stand alone for a few seconds, but then he inevitably crashes.
He really, really loves doors. He especially loves the doors to our bedrooms and one particular cabinet door in the kitchen (the others are locked). He just sits or stands by the door and opens and closes it (under very close supervision of course), sometimes for quite a while. He also goes immediately to all the doors in the tot lot: the doors to the pretend houses and the castle and the mailbox. Doors are just super fascinating to him. Thankfully he hasn't figured out how our sliding closet doors work just yet.
This past week he learned to clap his hands and now does it all the time, whether we ask him to or not.
He is still really fascinated by certain books and certain pages of books. Sometimes he just laughs for no apparent reason when we're reading to him. For a while, he would always kiss the "little mouse" in Goodnight Moon (that page is actually a little dirty from his kisses) and he loves all the books where he can touch different textures.
He seems to notice other babies his age much more now. Not only does he try to kiss them, but the other day it was so cute when he and his twelve-month-old friend Sid seemed to lock eyes from across the tot lot, give each other huge grins, and then crawl across the room to each other. Then they continued to follow each other around and play with the same toys.
He pretty much hates being fed solids (unless it's yogurt and bananas because he will do anything to get his favorite treat). He just swats the spoon or our hand away and gets upset and the whole thing just becomes a frustrating experience for me and for him. The whole baby food thing has just been a struggle with him from the beginning, so I have decided that we are done with it. I still try to feed him yogurt and fruit in the morning, because he accepts this pretty well, but we are just doing table food now, and letting him eat whatever he can pick up and feed to himself. He loves eating bread and cheese at lunch time because these are two foods that he can pretty easily feed himself. I am hoping that he will quickly get better at feeding himself more slippery things, like fruits and veggies (he has gotten pretty good at picking up and eating banana...go figure).
Speaking of food, he really loves his Puffs and every time I get out the container to give him some, his face lights up.

Here's an idea of what a day in the life of Jesse is like. It varies a little day to day depending on when he wakes up, how long his naps are and whether or not we have somewhere we have to go. I try to get out with him each day (for both my sanity and his), whether it's Bible study, going to the produce market, or running some other errand, but this might change a little once we have snow on the ground and it's freezing outside.

6-6:30 Wakes up and nurses

6:30-9:00 Play time at home

8:00 Breakfast, usually yogurt and fruit, but sometimes he hardly eats

9:00 Nurses and goes down for his morning nap

10:00-10:30 Wakes up from nap; this is the time we run errands or take a walk

12:00 Lunch and play at home

1 or 1:30 Nurses and goes down for afternoon nap

2:30-3:30 Usually wakes up from nap, plays for a bit and then nurses

4:00-5:00 Play time in the tot lot or getting out and going somewhere

5:30 Dinner, bath-time some nights

6:30 Nurses and bed-time

Playing with his favorite cabinet door in the kitchen: