My little buddy is 10 months old!  I can't believe we are nearing a year already!  Nathan is a busy boy.  He pretty much spends all day either nursing, cruising furniture or screaming at us to let him hold onto our fingers and walk around.  OK, OK... maybe he does a few other things, too.

His verbal skills are about the same.  He still mostly says da-da but every once-in-a-while I can tell he is trying to repeat what we are saying.  It just doesn't come out anything like it.    The other day he started saying gah.  He does LOTS of growling and screeching.  The happier he is, the more/louder he screeches.

Nathan has finally started trying to eat Cheerios.  He does lots of gagging and spitting some back out but he is swallowing a tiny bit.  We just let him feed himself however much he wants.  We figure he will know his own limits.  Once he is more successful with the Cheerios, we will start giving him more things.  We gave him some rice the other night but I'm not sure he actually got any in his mouth.  At least he will touch food of all consistencies, unlike our oldest at that age!  Obviously, he is still 99.9% breastfed.  He nurses a very reasonable amount during the day, IMO.  The problem comes at night, when he wants to nurse A LOT!  It's a special night if we can get 2 or 3 stretches of sleep out of him (being 2 hours or more each).  The rest of the time is spent nursing and sleeping at the same time.  I am so tired that I cannot possibly stay awake each time he nurses to make sure he unlatches and rolls over when done eating.  I try because this tends to give us longer stretches in between, but by about 3 or 4 am I am just wasted and end up falling asleep with him at the breast and we just kinda stay that way the rest of the night.  I am still planning to attempt night weaning him once he is 12 months.  I have this sneaking suspicion, however, that we won't be successful til he is a little older. Ugh.  His cries are just soooo heart breaking- much more so then both of his sisters' cries, I think.

So other than wanting to nurse all night, he is actually our best sleeper.  He usually takes 2 naps a day- 1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon.  They vary in length from 45 minutes up to 2.5 or 3 hours.  Most often they are around 1.5 hours each.  I nurse him in the rocking chair in our room and then put him in his crib.  I'd say 75% of the time he nurses to sleep and the other 25% of the time he doesn't nurse to sleep so I just put him in his crib awake.  His crib is still next to our bed but has both sides on it so it's separate from our bed.  At nighttime, dh actually puts him to bed 90% of the time.  I nurse him in the rocking chair and he doesn't usually fall asleep so dh takes him and puts him in his crib and lays next to him til he's asleep.  So we know he's capable of falling asleep without nursing. 

He still looooves to grab himself when I am changing his diaper.  The girls find this funny and weird.  Rebecca keeps asking if she used to touch her @enis, too.    At least Caetlyn has stopped telling complete strangers that her baby brother likes to touch his @enis.

I keep thinking things will get better once Nathan learns how to walk but I know it really won't because then he'll be into EVERYTHING.  He has gone from just cruising along the couch to cruising along anything he can get a hold of, including a wall!  He looks like he is trying to escape prison or something!   Walking is ALL he wants to do (other than nursing)!  He gets so mad when we won't let him hold onto our fingers and walk around.  It just kills our backs so we can only do it for 5 minutes or so.  He is starting to feel really stable to me.  I let go of him the other day and he stood by himself for a few seconds until he realized what I'd done and grabbed onto me.  Once he gets a little more brave, he might take off!

It's been different having a boy.  I notice that Nathan throws EVERYTHING he gets his hands on.  And he doesn' t hold still unless he's asleep.  Nathan's hair has less red in it now.  I think it's going to be like Rebecca's hair- kind of a brown with lots of red tone in it.  His eyes are confusing.  The color changes so much, depending on the lighting and what he has on.  They go from grey to grey with brown and green in them.  I don't know what to call them- hazel?!

OK, I want to share a pic of my little man from this past Sunday.  He had on a super cute outfit.  There is a tie that goes with it but the shirt was a bit tight on him so there was no way I could fasten the top button and clip that tie on.