Naps: Henry takes 2 naps each day, the first around 9:45am and the second around 2pm. His naps are almost always exactly 1 hour long; this kid has a very strong internal clock.

Feeding: There was a stretch this month where Henry was refusing to nurse for longer than 10 minutes. He would arch his back and shove away with his arms. At first I was thinking it was something related to teething, but when it didn’t go away after a couple of days, I tried lengthening the amount of time between feedings by 15 to 30 minutes. That seems to have fixed the problem. Henry now has breastmilk about every 4 1/2 hours. He is breastfed during the day and gets a bottle just before bed.

Clothing: 12 month

Bedtime: 7:30pm

Eating: Henry has really gotten into feeding himself and he is much more insistent about it. We started backing off of purees this month and shifting more towards finger foods in response to Henry’s desires. We used to feed him about 3 tablespoons of pureed food at the start of a meal, and then Henry would get finger foods to practice with. Now he gets about 1 tablespoon of puree and then gets finger foods.

Henry has a big appetite, especially when he is having one of his favorites. His current favorites are toast, mushrooms, and noodles with red sauce. We give him the last teaspoon or so of our orange juice in the morning which he also goes bonkers for.

We’re currently withholding berries from Henry’s diet, even though he loves them, because he seems to get rashy/chapped skin around his mouth when he has them.

Sleeping: We experienced a bit of a sleep regression this month. Henry started to consistently get restless around 4:30am, but would be able to fall back to sleep for a little bit. He would wake again around 6am and start yelling or sometimes crying. He was still tired but would get too worked up to fall back asleep. This is new for him; he hardly ever got upset in the mornings when he woke up. If we bring him to lay in bed with us, he usually can fall back asleep for another hour or so. We’re being careful to not let this become something Henry relies on. We still make him practice falling back asleep on his own in the mornings.

It kind of seems like Henry’s early waking is related to the sun coming up earlier. He’s very alert the moment he opens his eyes. It seems like as soon as he realizes it’s daytime, all efforts of trying to fall back asleep are halted. The same seems to be true with his bedtime. His bedtime has started to move later and it takes him a little longer to fall asleep at night.

Development: Henry went from sitting and reaching to crawling this month. He started out by transitioning from sitting to being on his belly. He would get one of his legs stuck in front of the other for the longest time. Then he learned how to use his arms to move himself, although he ended up pushing himself backwards at first. At the same time, he was learning to push up from his belly onto his hands and knees. That turned into transitioning from belly to sitting. Then one day something clicked where he learned that he could pull himself forward and slide on his belly. He also learned that he could move his hands one at a time to take some “steps” with his hands and gradually move forward. Within a couple of days from then, he was crawling. He’s not very speedy yet with crawling, and he still will resort to pulling himself along on his belly sometimes, but he definitely understands that crawling can get him to where he wants to go quickly.

Up until this month, Henry understood the concept of “out” but not “in”. He was a champion at emptying his toy bins, going through “his” kitchen cabinet and emptying everything out, and taking books off of his bookshelf. This month we started to see the emergence of the concept of “in”. It started when he tried to put his snack back in his dish. Now he’ll also put toys back in their container, and sometimes even try to put the lid back on.

Henry is starting to try to stack things as well. He still struggles with the coordination involved, but you can tell that he is thinking hard about it based on the amount of drool falling out of his mouth and onto his shirt. He will bang blocks together, and try fitting Megablocks together. He also has a spiral ball ramp that he likes to play with which has similar motions involved to stacking.

Henry has been making word-like sounds for a couple of months already, but this month Henry said his first word that seems to actually name something–Mama. I do my best to answer him whenever he calls out “Mama”. Adam feels a little left out since he hasn’t yet picked a word for him. There have been a few times that he’s said “Baba” or “Apa” but it’s never been consistent or clear that he’s trying to name something.

Likes and Dislikes: Henry didn’t mind brushing his teeth when we first started doing it with him, but now it’s something that he can barely tolerate. He has enough patience for a few brushes on the top and bottom and then he starts turning his head away.

Every night before bedtime, Adam and Henry have fun doing summersaults and flips. Henry likes to dive forward and roll down your legs or flip off of your lap to land on his feet.

We’ve love going outside since the weather has gotten nice. We try to go on a walk around the neighborhood or bike ride every day. We might also stop at the park to swing or spin. Henry really likes going outside; he has since he was really little. He gets excited when we get out his jacket, or start walking towards the door.

Henry has been making lots of new noises this month. One of his favorite sounds to make is “wah-wah-wah” that he does by covering and uncovering his mouth with the back of his hand.

Henry loves doors. He loves to open and close them, swing them back and forth, and play peek-a-boo with them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a door going to another room or a cabinet door–he loves them the same.

New This Month: As mentioned before, we took Henry on his first bike ride this month. We bought a Burley bike trailer for Henry to ride in and a baby helmet for him to wear. The first ride was a little iffy since Henry kept sliding forward and ended up sitting in a really awkward position. Since then we’ve put a pillow behind his back, and he’s been having a lot of fun. He sings to himself as we bike around the lake.

Henry had his first (and second) sleepover this month as well at his Nana and Papa’s house. Based on the reports that we got, Henry did great and had a lot fun.

Other Notes: Since Henry started moving around on his own, we’ve had to say no to him a lot more as he tries to reach for potentially dangerous things. For the most part, Henry obeys us when we say no, as long as we say it sternly. It helps too if we shake our heads while we say it. Henry will often try a couple more times to do whatever it is we told him not too, but that seems to be just his way of making sure he understands us. Sometimes he will even act like he is going to do it, but then will start shaking his head just as he’s about to start. I’ve been making an effort to make a big deal out of him choosing to play with things that are safe for him, and to make playing with his toys fun so that he doesn’t hear “No!” from us all day long.

Mama and Papa Update: Life has gotten busy, especially now that Henry is moving. We like that he started to move just as the weather started to get nice. It’s fun to take Henry outside and see him exploring rather than being cooped-up in the house.

This past month has been a little draining with Henry not sleeping the greatest in the early morning hours. I know we have hardly anything to complain about compared to what many parents go through. At the same time though, we do miss having Henry sing to us in the morning or quietly chat to himself rather than the yelling and screaming we’ve been getting lately.