Eleven months of EET

I can’t believe you are already eleven months old, little man. Where has the time gone? It feels like you’ve always been here!

You are such a lovely, smiley happy little boy and your FOMO doesn’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon. You rarely cry, in fact, I think that the only time you do is when your brother takes a toy off you or we try to get you to sleep.

baby snuggling into mums shoulder

Sleep has been an ongoing battle with you since you were born. You don’t like to sleep much, you like to be ready for action. I do worry that you’re not getting enough quality sleep. The longest stretch of sleep you’ve ever had is five hours and that happened only once. Three seems to be optimum for you and nap times seem to be 40 minutes. Looking at anything online to do with sleep makes me worry as you don’t seem to be getting enough by any experts advice. Your awake times are so long in comparison too, you’re probably awake twice as long as you should be.

Moving forward, for both of our sakes, we’re going to have to change things as it can take between one and a half and two hours to get you to sleep in any kind of structured routine time. Hopefully, when I get the chance to look at building a sleep plan with Nicole who is a baby sleep consultant, we should both be more rested! You’ve been getting stronger on your feet for the last six weeks or so, in the past three weeks, your reluctance to go sleep has grown, so it must be related to you trying to master new skills!

baby stood by cupboard with superman cape on

You now have eight teeth, with at least another two imminent as you are really struggling and have your hands constantly in your mouth. You refuse to use any kind of official teething toy, but will quite happily put anything else in your mouth to try and ease your pain. You are comfortably in aged 6-9 months clothes now and the last time you were weighed about 4 weeks ago you were 18lbs 2oz. So you’re still teeny tiny for your age. I’m not sure why as you seem really long to me, but you must have petit features. You still feel really squidgy. You have the softest, most beautiful skin and still have little rolls, which are just the cutest. The ones on your wrists seem to be disappearing and where they were on your wrists is lilly white compared to the rest of your arm!

We still haven’t found much that you will not eat. However, you do seem to be showing a great enjoyment of eating everyone else’s food, even if you have the exact same thing on your plate. You dart over to anyone who you can see eating and point at their food, letting them know that you want some. Or in my case, just take it off me. You like to be treated exactly the same as your cousins and brother, despite them being a lot older than you. So you protest if they get ice cream and you don’t, to the point that you will just take theirs.

baby with ice cream all over his face

You recently tried shoes on for the first time and hated them. You would not stand up, you were sat glued to the floor trying to work out how to get them off of your feet for the entire time. It is the most I have known you sit still since you could crawl and you have refused any attempt of trying to put them on your feet since. I tried them on as you are on your tiptoes, I was told shoes would help and since you seem to be so desperate to walk, I thought this may help.

baby trying clarks doodles on for the first time

Your relationship with your brother just gets stronger and stronger, although you’ve already learned how to annoy each other, pretty well. You have started to show that you’re not an easy target and will simply accept him taking toys from you anymore. There have at times been instances where I have seen you try to bite his hands when he has been trying to prize something away from you, I’ll be honest, I’m quite impressed! I don’t want you to be pushed around because you’re little and I don’t think you’re going to allow that to happen!

brothers sat on top of mud kitchen in garden

You share a love for music with your brother and you both love bashing the pots and pans. We usually only have to say or show you something once and you’ll repeat it, which blows our minds. You say HIYA to everyone you meet and wave goodbye too. You know Dada, Mama, Cat and you can call for the cat and you still call your brother HUH, but we always know what that sound means. You’re very good at pointing to what you want, letting people know when you want to be picked up and when you are hungry. You’re so very different to your brother and I love that as every experience with you is like having a baby for the first time again.

baby on bed of cbeebies hotel room

We recently went away for the night to CBeebies Land Hotel and to the rides at Alton Towers, you made this experience so much better than I could have ever expected. You and your brother were absolutely in your elements. We thought you’d just sit in your pushchair and enjoy looking at everything, but you absolutely embraced everything. You were at the front of the performances with the older kids, enjoying the rides, watching the entertainment in the hotel and getting your picture taken with your favourite characters. You absolutely loved the In the Night Garden ride and your little face when you saw the characters was brilliant. I underestimated how much this experience would be for you as you’ve only watched TV fleetingly and your brother pretty much dictates that you must like Bing because it is always on!

You recently had your first sleepover at Grandma’s House and you had her up as much as you have me up during the night! So we are going to do that a little more often than once every 11 months as I think our feeding journey may be coming to an end soon due to us both needing a little more sleep and me returning to work in a few months time. I can’t believe we made it this far, although I do wish sometimes that you would take a dummy instead of trying to use me as one!

Excited to see what you will get up to ahead of our next update!