11 Months

He also loves feeding the dogs.

11 months old, most things have stayed the same. BUT James has started taking steps independently, began at about 10.5m and he is just getting better and better.  Still eating like a champ, loves to play outside and is getting more interested in door knobs. He tries to get the backdoor open when he wants to go outside lol.

He gets frustrated when he can't do things, especially when he's tired. He loves to be helpful and feed us. He imitates us, like brushing hair and talking on the phone. He "reads" by taking a book and babbling while flipping the pages.  He is a climber, he always is trying to get on top of things like the entertainment center! He waves now, and is typically a happy, curious little guy.

We haven't weighed/measured him recently but he's over 25lbs and somewhere between 29-30 inches. Overall growing has slowed down from the breakneck pace the first 6-9m of his life, which is a good thing. But he's already growing out of some of his 18m clothes. Next is 24m/2T! It will be interesting to see how his growth and development continues.

We decided to start trying some part time elimination communication, google it for more info. Basically it's based on the premise that humans have an innate dislike being wet/soiled and will communicate their need to eliminate. As babies they do this with facial and physical cues, as toddlers they can sign/vocalize their need. The parent's "job" is to listen to the child's cues and find them an appropriate place to eliminate.  We started noticing a pattern to his eliminations and started taking him to a child-sized toilet. We've caught some and missed some but it's a start towards transitioning from diapers to using the toilet. Most people who do EC, as it's abbreviated, start much younger but so far James is going with it. At this point we're still comfortable with using diapers most of the time. But we've found he will wake up from naps dry and we take him to the toilet upon waking and voila. Also the last few months we've noticed he will not defecate outside of the house. It is interesting and I don't know whether it's a coincidence because he typically goes early in the day when he's still at home but he hasn't had a soiled diaper out/about in months. The only exception is when he spends all day at his Aunt's house - my sister - who has babysat him since 11wk.  But he has patterns and we are working with those and learning his cues.

Overall doing great and growing fast. Next post will be about his 1yr party plans!