9.

Sheesh, time to dust off this ol' blog. It was starting to grow cobwebs. Sorry for my unintentional absence. Life got away from me there. But I had some motivation to blog this week because this little guy turned nine months old! Not sure how that happened.

Between teething and two back to back colds, this little guy has not been himself this month. I suppose he's just making up for the first eight months of hardly ever crying. It must have been all bottled up in there, waiting to come out. I said to Jon, "I think he's cried more this month than he did for the first eight combined". And really, I think its true. Poor thing. He's even woken up at 4:30 or 5:30 several mornings lately. I let him cry for a while (15-20 min) but have always ended up giving him a bottle and then he goes right back to sleep for another few hours. I'm probably going to have to take my own advice pretty soon and let him cry it out to break the habit if it keeps up. I have never had a baby do that before at this age. (I do think its interesting that I've been the least consistent with Channing's schedule and he's my least consistent sleeper!)

 
 

He started eating Puffs the last few weeks which has made life much easier when I'm trying to get other stuff done and he's just being fussy. But that has also caused him to be horribly constipated. I asked my chiropractor what to do (my pediatrician suggested cocoa for constipation! I tried it once in his bottle. His first chocolate milk :) It did actually work). My chiropractor said all the extra sugar in his diet (those Puffs break down to sugar really quickly) is throwing off the healthy bacteria in his gut so he said to give him Probiotics. I started mixing some in his baby food yesterday so hopefully that gets him back to normal.

He's eating a lot more variety of baby foods and isn't too picky anymore. He still hates anything with texture though. But he is in that phase of constantly trying to grab the spoon so half the time I'm feeding him, he's crying in frustration because I won't give it to him. He's now completely weaned as of just a few days ago. Thankfully I still have plenty of frozen milk left (even after supplementing with some for three of his feedings for the last month! All that hard, time-consuming work of pumping those first two months after every feeding paid off big time.) It should last us another couple months.

"Mom...pleeeease don't make me do this right now!!"

"Somebody get me outta here! Bennett?? ... Dawson? ... Anybody?" 

 "Fine. One smile. But I'm still crying on the inside."

He's just barely starting to scoot on his belly but really the only time he does it is when he's on our bed. He gets a fist-full of the comforter, face-plants, and pulls. He's a little inch worm. A very slow inch worm. He's also now attached to a little blankey. As soon as you give it to him, his little thumb goes in. Its so sweet. I got good advice from a few women to make sure your thumb-sucker has a lovey. Because then when they're older, you can take it away and they'll stop sucking their thumb. (Although, that still doesn't seem much better than trying to remember a pacifier everywhere you go...but if it helps in the end, I know we'll be glad).

We managed to get a group shot with both sets of grandkids. A Thanksgiving miracle:

And my favorite shot from Thanksgiving day, my niece, Piper with Channing:

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