the primary fiddle: 10 months!

our little man with some of his favorite things

Well, here we are at the 10 month update. I knew this first year would go quickly, but I never in a million years could have guessed just how quickly. I cannot believe that in a few weeks Alden will turn one! I say it every time I post a monthly update and I'll say it again, TIME FLIES!

Alden's 10th month was a busy one: he got another tooth, went to visit Mimi & PopPop in Alabama for Christmas, tried some yummy new foods (he's really into hummus and grapes at the moment), and got much more mobile on his feet. He still doesn't stand unassisted but we think he's close. He's very cautious and we think he's just scared to fall so he's taking his time figuring it out. I'm actually really ready for him to walk because, for now, he's in this weird stage where he wants to be standing all the time but he can't stand unless he's at furniture or with us (or more specifically, our legs). I think it's harder to do things around the house because he's always climbing up me and he is so focused on physical development right now, he doesn't sit and play the way he used to. It's okay though, it's just a phase and pretty soon he'll be so busy running around that we'll be begging him to come tug on our legs to be picked up :)

We got a little brave last month and decided to slowly reintroduce some dairy and see how he did. We have a sneaking suspicion that the main culprit may be soy for him since we have now seen him have a skin reaction to soybean oil (which is kind of weird...). We probably picked a bad week to start the reintroduction because he wasn't sleeping well and had been really fussy and "off" all week beforehand but...we saw some increase in allergy-like symptoms (gassiness, sleeping less, stomach symptoms, runny nose) in the couple of days after I had eaten some dairy so we're waiting another 2 weeks or so for the proteins to leave our systems and then trying again. We think that there may have been some other foods at work to give him the symptoms we were seeing so we're in sleuth mode at the moment trying to figure out what's going on. We're getting close to trying again and hopefully before his birthday we'll have a solid answer on whether he can tolerate dairy.

Alden is really vocalizing a lot now and has started to really try to communicate with us more. He still doesn't sign back to us (which isn't surprising since Nick & I are bad about signing all the time) but he definitely knows the sign and word for milk and he obviously understands SO much of what we're saying to him. It's incredible to watch his little brain learn how to communicate with us even before he's talking! If we ask him to hand us something or to come here, he pretty much always does what we're saying…unless of course he chooses to ignore us because he's having too much fun breaking the blinds or playing in the trash can ;) I read an article somewhere (I think it came to my inbox in a weekly newsletter and now I'm having trouble finding it…maybe this one? Same message anyway…) that mentioned that a baby's first word isn't necessarily a word the way we think of them. That it can be any sound that they consistently and repeatedly use to refer to something. If that's really the way to define a first word, then ladies and gentlemen, we have our first word! Nick & I are reluctant to say that Alden is actually a "talker" because we're just not sure that he's really there. But, we are definitely sure that he is communicating more and more with us by pointing and making sounds.

Our baby is certainly well on his way to toddlerhood!

The photos may be sparse for this month since I shared so many in our holiday recap post but here we go anyway :)