Hellobee

Can I be honest here? The eleventh month was both rewarding and challenging!

Serious. Trouble. Maker.

This was a learning month for Scribble, due to his developing physical skills. Scribble’s eating, sleeping, playing habits, and temperament were affected by his new milestones.

As I mentioned in my last update, Scribble learned how to sit himself up at the very end of month ten.  This ended up being a total game changer for sleep!  Once he learned how to sit up, he realized he could sit up in his crib.  This made it more difficult for Scribble to self-soothe and settle into sleep. Where he used to just lay in bed until sleep overtook him, now he sits up wanting to play.  We’ve started giving him loveys this month to coax him to stay on his back when we lay him down.

Scribble’s nap schedule also changed this month– well, it is still changing! For four months we had utter bliss in our house. I kid you not, our child woke up no earlier than seven in the morning, would nurse in bed with me, then would go back to bed for a morning nap that lasted until ten or eleven! This month Scribble realized how generous he was being, and started waking up ready to play. His naps have gotten shorter too.  This meant that by five or six PM he was a beast. So he has had a few days with three naps this month.  We had a few instances of night waking, which indicated to me that he was probably overtired.  I got tired of the chaos, so I’ve been working on establishing a new schedule for Scribble. We now wake up and have breakfast and I try to push his morning nap until he is very tired. My goal is a 9:00–11:00 nap and a 2:00-4:00 nap.  His overall bedtime has moved from 8:30 to 7:00 or 7:30 also.  He has responded well to these changes!

In month eleven, Scribble started going through a phase of deep separation anxiety. I thought we covered this in month eight but I was totally wrong. Looking back, that clearly was just him frustrated with not being able to crawl. Nowadays, Scribble exhibits clear signs of separation anxiety. He will crawl to a part of the room where he can’t see me, then immediately start crying. He falls apart if he’s in the high chair and I move to a part of the kitchen where he can’t see me.   Now that he is sitting himself up and pulling up a little, he likes to grab my ankles when I’m walking around to try to keep me in one place. He also completely melts down when I start preparing food and don’t give it to him immediately. Hubby and I have theorized that Scribble now understands that not all food is his food, whereas he used to not think about where his food came from! So now I move the high chair from the breakfast nook into the food prep area so that I can give him little bites while I prepare it.
I think we may be turning a corner in this issue! Scribble learned to chase a few days ago, and now when I leave the room he just follows me. It is the most precious thing.

In general, mealtimes have become a bigger struggle for us.  My perfect eater, who would nom anything I gave him, is now selective! He will still eat pretty much everything, but he really has his preferences. I now have to give him his food in stages: first veggie, then protein, then fruit, then finally dairy or starch.  And the more desirable foods can’t be visible to Scribble, or he’ll wait for the good stuff!  He also really wants what is on our plate, even if we are feeding him the same thing we are eating.  This new development, combined with his earlier bedtime, means that we frequently feed him separately and then have our dinner after he goes to sleep.  He also seems to be interested in eating from a plate, so I’m considering ditching the high chair tray and pulling him up to the table soon.  I can probably count on two hands the number of (individual) Cheerios and Goldfish he’s had. Not a single mum-mum or puff has passed his lips.  This isn’t because I’m a snotty food mommy (believe me; he’s already had a fast food breakfast biscuit!), but because his love of starch is so abiding, if he knew that those foods existed, he’d never eat another green veggie again.

Month eleven hasn’t been all bad! There has been a lot to get excited about. Scribble is pulling up, loves to clap and bang objects together, and is increasingly verbal. He didn’t add any more words this month, but he can now identify his words in a book or in real life– he sees a rubber duck, a duck puppet, a real duck, or a duck picture and calls them all duck! He is working on “b” and “m” sounds. He says “mamamama” only when he wants something (predictably!)– namely food or to go to sleep.  He also does this funny thing where he runs his hand across his lips to make a silly noise.  He is getting much better at mimicking us. Here’s a video of him saying “Go Dawgs” when we do (that’s the chant of our alma mater, and because his first word was doggie, it made sense to try and teach him!):

A massive bright spot in our month is that Scribble went through a growth spurt and is nursing like a champ again. He totally improved my supply as well.  I’m even leaking again! At ten months I didn’t know if we had another two left, but now with less than a month to go until our one year goal, I feel much more confident.

Really, it has been a fascinating time.  It is so interesting to watch his mind work through challenges, to develop preferences. It has been a challenge for us to respond to all of his new skills, and when we are able to do so, it really increases our confidence as parents.

This post is coming a little late, so I can tell you that things seem to have calmed down in our house a little, especially now that Scribble is pulling up more. That seems to have caught his imagination and diverted his attention; now he’s got a one-track mind! Plus some of the fixes we’ve introduced have helped us to adapt to his development.


How was your Month 11? Did milestones affect your child’s behavior or temperament?