The Wellness Care Blog: Dear Chase

Dear Chase-

We've made it 11 months. Hard to believe in just a month you'll be one year old!! Where did my baby go?!

baby 11 months

Here's what's been going on this month. Food-wise, your still getting 4 bottles a day (30 oz total) around 8, 12:30, 5 & 8. Most days you eat either lunch, dinner or both with us but if you're napping or busy while we eat one meal I don't sweat it. You eat anything I eat as long as it's not super hard or crunchy. We still haven't come across anything you don't like! You love pulled pork, ribs and pizza – you can pretty much eat an entire slice!

baby 11 months

Sleep is going well! You usually wake up around 7:30 or 8. This month your naps have shifted a bit so you usually stay up until 10:30/11 and nap until 12/12:30 and then most days I take you over to the gym and put your down for your afternoon nap around 4 and you sleep until 5:30ish. This has been working out well because then I can workout at 4:30 and daddy can workout at 5:45. Most nights you're asleep by 8:30. Towards the end of the month I've been able to just give you a bottle and put you in your crib and walk out. During nap time I usually sit in your room and work on my computer until you fall asleep. For the past week or so you've been boycotting your afternoon nap and it turns out you're getting your top teeth! One has poked through and the other is coming. You're definitely crabbier than usual.

baby 11 months

We go to the gym pretty much every day and you love it. You have your own bucket of toys that you love and you still like your Graco Bumper Jumper
and your VTech Walker. Whenever you need to burn some energy we go to the gym because there's tons of space for you to move around. You're not full-on walking yet but if someone is holding one or both of your hands you'll walk forever. You've taken up to 3 steps on your own and you can stand up with or without holding onto something. I think you'll be walking on your own within the next month!

Mommy's been trying to come up with fun things for us to do together during the day. We go to the playground most days and you love crawling and walking around. You also started a music class at the community center. I scheduled it before your naptime shifted so now it's right in the middle of naptime so that's been a bit problematic…but overall you really like it. I also took you to The Little Gym for a trial class and you loved it..but it's so expensive so we may hold off on signing you up for a while. You loved the bubbles we played with. We go to the library a lot as well. There are lots of puzzles, games, etc for you to play with and we always come home with a few new books.

You LOVE books. Bizzy Bear is still your favorite. You also love music. This activity table is still by far the best thing we've bought you. You play with it every single day and love to jam to the music.

Mommy went out of town for a few days and Mimi and Grandpa came to visit. They did a great job helping daddy take care of you and you learned so much while I was gone – including how to hold your own bottle and how to clap for patty cake. Clapping is now your new favorite thing and you do it all the time.

You're also very into drumming. Daddy had his Alumni Band Night and I took you to watch. Now you drum whenever you can. Daddy shortened a couple of drum sticks so you could have a pair that are easier for you to manage! You actually have pretty good rhythm. You also love to climb the stairs and you still enjoy taking all the shoes off the shoe rack multiple times per day.

You're wearing 24 month or 2T shirts and some 12-18, mostly 18-24 month bottoms. Fall clothes are the cutest and you're probably going to wear nothing but plaid shirts and skinny jeans or overalls for the rest of the year. You're getting heavy. I'm sure you're at least 23 pounds. Mommy has decided it's time to buy a little stroller that I can use when I need to go to the mall or into a store that doesn't have shopping carts because you give my arms quite a workout! Shopping with you when you're not in a cart is pretty much impossible because you want to get down and crawl around immediately.

Last weekend we took you to a local farm. You met a baby calf and some chickens which you really liked and we took of few pics of you with the pumpkins. We're still trying to decide what you're going to be for Halloween.

When you're not teething, you're a very happy baby. You love your animals but we're still working on gentle petting. I love watching you play because you can just see your little mind working. You're so smart! You say baba, buhbuh, mama and various other sounds but still haven't said dada yet.

Can't wait to see how much you grow this month! Mommy loves you!

If you're interested in previous letters, you can find them here: