A day in the life of two brothers...: 11 months old!

Parker is now (as of 4/02) 11 months old!

And he's quite happy about it...

Really happy...

Aside from being generally happy, at 11 months, Parker is:
* Seemingly not as big as his brother was at this age, but everyone says he is big to them. He's wearing mostly 12M clothes (some 12-18 and 18M things...though still 6-12 & 9M pants. I look at all of the summer clothes hand-me-downs he has from Thomas and I can't figure how he's going to fit into them anytime soon. We'll see!
* Babbling all the time. He mimics sounds very well, though lately he seems to be on strike against saying "mama." He has said it before. He tries to repeat words like "dog" when he sees the dog and "ball" when he holds a ball. Whenever I applaud his efforts at anything (ie. eating all his food, saying a word) by saying "Great job, Parker!" he claps for himself. It's quite cute. Whenever I ask him something about Thomas, he starts excitedly exclaiming babble and gets the biggest smile on his face.
* Sometimes shy about waving, but usually loves to wave "hi" and "bye bye" to people.
* Still using a commando crawl to get around. At the beginning of his crawl he will usually attempt a typical crawl, and he is getting better and has managed a few "crawls" here and there on all fours, but usually resorts to a commando/army crawl to get where he wants to go quickly.
* Not ready to walk tomorrow...and I'm glad that makes him my little baby for a bit longer. He will stand if I'm holding his hands and sometimes take a step or two if encouraged strongly. He's still not completely steady when holding himself up and he can pull himself up to kneeling, but not standing.
* A much better eater than his brother! He is really starting to dislike baby food, so I'm quickly trying to increase his opportunities to try table food (though it's a little hard since I'm trying to avoid dairy (for him) for at least one more month (to hopefully avoid the same intolerance problems his brother has had)). But when we give him non-baby food, he cannot eat it fast enough. He just shovels and shovels and I don't know how he can get it down as quickly as he can. We give him the baby food first and he usually takes a few bites and then starts screaming for something else. He gets so happy when he just hears the crinkle of the bag when I reach in to grab him a handful of Cheerios. For example of what he is eating these days, tonight after his baby food (squash/apples), he ended up having chicken, apples and lima beans (so he really didn't need the baby food!).
* Nursing 5-6 times a day and still will not even consider the thought of a bottle. This complicates life a bit in that I can never be away from him for too long.
* Napping two times a day (usually down at 9:30 for about 1.5 hours and at 2:00 for 1.5-2 hours). He's still not a great napper, but hopefully one day when he goes to one nap he will be better. On the days where he doesn't get a morning nap he sleeps very well for his afternoon nap.
* Down for bed around 7 and on a good day, he sleeps until 7. Though lately he's been waking around 5:30 and crying out for a second (just long enough to wake me) and again during the six o'clock hour a few times. I'm hoping it's teething because it has not been enjoyable to get such early wake-up calls!
* Possibly working on another tooth. He has four on top that are all still coming through (and they are impressively crooked...thumbsucking is bad!) and two on the bottom.
* A mommy's' boy! :) And though it bugs his Daddy sometimes (understandably!), it makes me smile. Can't say I want him to be that way forever, but for now, it's sweet.
* A sweet, precious little boy; and I cannot believe he is almost one year old!

See what I mean, he's a sweet boy...