Max: 7-10 months

This update covers Max's life from 7 months to 10 months.  I neglected the month-by-month updates so I tried to consolidate it here.

Night Sleep

He is a great sleeper at night.  His sleep didn't seem to be affected by teething, but while in Arkansas he did have several bottom teeth coming in and had some rough nights where he woke a number of times and couldn't get himself back to sleep easily.  He typically goes to bed between 6 and 7 and wakes around 6 in the morning.  He puts himself to sleep pretty well.  He might fuss for 5-10 minutes, but it rarely escalates enough that I need to go in to calm him down.

Naps

At 8 months I "forced" him to cut one of his three naps.  He had been taking an early morning nap (around 8 or sometimes even earlier...basically 2 hours after waking), a late morning nap and a mid-afternoon nap.  The first week or so it was difficult to stretch him to 8:30 or 9:00 for his first nap, but now it is no problem at all.  His naps got much longer when we did this and it's not unusual for both his morning and afternoon naps to last 2 hours or even more. If his afternoon nap is particularly long, he might not fall asleep until closer to 8:00 at night.

Eating

At nearly 10 months Max is still nursing 4-5 times per day.  A few weeks ago he seemed somewhat disinterested in nursing, but I think that was mainly due to him being distracted by Jesse.  When I am intentional to have Jesse involved in some activity or watching tv, Max nurses much better/more efficiently.  He is also eating 3 solid meals a day and likes most everything we have given him.  Around 9 months we started moving away from the pureed baby food and just giving him bits of whatever we eat.  He handles this much better than Jesse did and is quite good at picking up the food on his tray.  He eats yogurt once/day, usually some baby oatmeal once each day, and then some of our food.  His favorites are cheese, avocado, banana, watermelon, cantaloupe, yogurt, applesauce, cheerios and baby Mum Mums.  He is also pretty good at drinking water from his sippy cup.

Milestones

Max began waving around 7.5 months.  He began clapping on the day we drove from Chicago to Arkansas, right before 9 months. He is very proud of this skill and as soon as he hears the word "yay" he begins clapping.

He also surprised us by signing "more" when he needs more food on his tray.  I did use this sign a number of times, but wasn't very consistent and didn't think he would actually pick it up, but he did.  He is so cute when he does it, and it is usually coupled with loud squealing (he loves his food).

He also began doing a lot more babbling around the 8-9 month mark, saying things like "mama", "dada", "baba", "nana", etc.  We think he may actually mean "mama" and "dada" when he says them, and he says something that sounds an awful lot like Jesse ("dete").

He began initiating games of peekaboo (covering his face up and then uncovering it), maybe around the 7 month mark.

He still does not crawl, but he scoots everywhere on his bottom.  He can pull up onto his knees, but not quite onto his feet yet (though James says he did it once), although he is working on it. He still hates tummy time and refuses to roll from his belly to his back, though he did do this for about a week or so around the 6 month mark, so I'm not sure why he doesn't do it anymore.  I try to have him do some tummy time everyday, and he is definitely getting stronger and is now lifting his entire belly off the floor, but he still doesn't get onto his hands and knees (though if we place him in this position he can easily maintain it).

Play

He loves to be wherever Jesse is.  When Jesse isn't around, Max is much harder to keep content (I'm just not as entertaining as Jesse).  When we go to the park, Max is very content to swing for long periods of time.  This is great because the other option is to put him on a blanket (but now he can scoot off of it, and before that he had figured out how to pull it so that he could get to the grass and wood chips underneath it) or set him on the ground and let him eat everything in sight.
-