(Last weekend we had a lazy morning, which meant that breakfast took a little longer than Béla wanted. When I came to the kitchen from the bathroom I found he'd taken things into his own hands and gone rummaging in the cupboards - not unusual by itself - and found...)
(...a bag of raw potatoes, which he started to eat. Poor starving thing! He's nothing but skin and bones... ...and substantial amounts of muscle and fat and plump little organs.)Today Béla is 11 months old. I swear he's grown in the two weeks since his last doctor's appointment, and his hair is definitely getting longer and thicker. It even looks a bit shaggy now, which I love.
(One morning when I was leaving for work, and Béla was already down for his first nap of the day, joined by his sleepy papa.)
This week marked the first time that he spent a night away from me, as I travelled to Bonn Monday night for a meeting at the German space agency (DLR) on Tuesday. Béla and Jeremi did just fine, though he wasn't impressed with having to wait for the bottle to get ready the two times he woke up to eat in the night.
(Trying to decide which bucket fit best on his head. It's a shame we didn't get a better picture of him wearing the yellow one - it looks like a big fez on him, like in the Julius Meinl coffee logo:)
Yup, he still wakes up to eat pretty often. He really slept through well the first 5-6 months, and now wakes up at least once, and sometimes more. I'm convinced that he needs the food though, and that it's not something that needs to be "trained" out, and we're nowhere near desperate enough to attempt any sort of sleep training that involves crying. Usually he wakes up, nurses, and goes right back to sleep. Occasionally, less than once a week, he wakes up and is quite alert and wants to play. At this point, when nursing doesn't get him back down, Jeremi gets up with him. Sometimes they just have to go to the living room to play for a little, sometimes he needs a little midnight snack (of food, not milk). One time this past week when he woke up hungry and I nursed him on both sides and he was still desperately hungry and not going back to sleep, Jer got up with him and got him a bottle of cow's milk (we've started introducing this over the past couple weeks), and he drank 300 ml (~10 ounces), after being nursed. This is partly why I'm convinced that he's waking up because he's really hungry. And he's really growing! Right before our eyes! He was 26 pounds on the bathroom scale this morning, which is two pound more than he weighed on our scale last month.
(He's been playing with the pots for a while now, but on this particular morning he was smashing together two pot lids like cymbals, which pleased him to no end. It also gives me ideas of dressing him up in a monkey suit with a little red velvet vest and gold cymbals as a Halloween costume. Oh, how I wish Germans liked Halloween more. All my costume-making energy is wasted here. Our area doesn't even really go in for Carnival so much, unlike some regions of Germany.)
(One morning when I was leaving for work, and Béla was already down for his first nap of the day, joined by his sleepy papa.)This week marked the first time that he spent a night away from me, as I travelled to Bonn Monday night for a meeting at the German space agency (DLR) on Tuesday. Béla and Jeremi did just fine, though he wasn't impressed with having to wait for the bottle to get ready the two times he woke up to eat in the night.
(Trying to decide which bucket fit best on his head. It's a shame we didn't get a better picture of him wearing the yellow one - it looks like a big fez on him, like in the Julius Meinl coffee logo:)
Yup, he still wakes up to eat pretty often. He really slept through well the first 5-6 months, and now wakes up at least once, and sometimes more. I'm convinced that he needs the food though, and that it's not something that needs to be "trained" out, and we're nowhere near desperate enough to attempt any sort of sleep training that involves crying. Usually he wakes up, nurses, and goes right back to sleep. Occasionally, less than once a week, he wakes up and is quite alert and wants to play. At this point, when nursing doesn't get him back down, Jeremi gets up with him. Sometimes they just have to go to the living room to play for a little, sometimes he needs a little midnight snack (of food, not milk). One time this past week when he woke up hungry and I nursed him on both sides and he was still desperately hungry and not going back to sleep, Jer got up with him and got him a bottle of cow's milk (we've started introducing this over the past couple weeks), and he drank 300 ml (~10 ounces), after being nursed. This is partly why I'm convinced that he's waking up because he's really hungry. And he's really growing! Right before our eyes! He was 26 pounds on the bathroom scale this morning, which is two pound more than he weighed on our scale last month.
(He's been playing with the pots for a while now, but on this particular morning he was smashing together two pot lids like cymbals, which pleased him to no end. It also gives me ideas of dressing him up in a monkey suit with a little red velvet vest and gold cymbals as a Halloween costume. Oh, how I wish Germans liked Halloween more. All my costume-making energy is wasted here. Our area doesn't even really go in for Carnival so much, unlike some regions of Germany.)He's getting more active and independent by the day, and spends lots of time walking around, bringing items from room to room. He loves moving shoes, and it's quite standard to have to hunt for one or both of them before leaving the house. They might be in the bathtub, the bedroom, the kitchen cupboard, or the playpen. There's really no way to know. Last night he put one of my shoes in the oven, which thankfully wasn't turned on, which is partly why we're trying to get him to stop playing with the oven in general.
(Here he is, wearing his Osh Kosh 18 month overalls for the first time. They're still a little long, but definitely not too narrow! And yes, that's a pile of cardamom powder that he's standing in.)
(Looking like a baby, on his hands and knees. His eyes look pretty brown here, but they're a little greenish. I hope they stay a bit green like mine, but I'm sure he'll be gorgeous regardless.)
(Absolute concentration...)This month marked the first time that he can actually get the stacking rings onto the classic Fisher Price stacking ring toy, which has been very exciting. He's also moved from inside-outside (the concept that informed all of his play last month) to open-closed. Anything that can be opened and closed must be repeatedly opened and closed, or else he becomes quite frustrated. This is hard, because some things he's not yet able to open on his own, at which point he hands it toward whichever parent is there, and if you don't immediately open it, he starts to get rather angry. But of course some things we'd rather he not open, like the jars of spices that he plays with (though he did manage to spill cardamom powder all over the hall last week). There's one plastic case that holds a deck of cards that we've renamed "the box of unending sorrow", as he had so much trouble opening it at first, and it made him cry so many times. (It's better now, partly because his motor skills are improving, and partly because he wore down the clasp through repeated use.) The plastic wipes box with the lid that flips open is also a particular favourite.
(Playing with his friend Hanna, the daughter of friends of ours who we met at prenatal classes, and who conveniently live around the corner from us. Hanna is 11 days older than Béla, and her dad's at home with her right now too, so he and Jer hang out, just as her mom and I hung out when I was at home.)
(Hanna and her dad, Sebastian. They get together every week or so. I got together with all the moms and babies from the prenatal class while I was off, they meet roughly weekly, but I haven't seen them since April, but apparently Hanna and Béla are the only ones walking so far!)In other non-milestone-related news, we're heading out on vacation tomorrow! We're doing a bit of a crazy tour, travelling over 2700 km by train, stopping in Krakow (Poland), Lviv, Kiev, Bakhchysaray, and Sevastopol (all in Ukraine), and then going by ferry across the Black Sea to Istanbul, where we're spending a week, meeting up with our friend Marie. (See approximate train route on the map below.) From there we're flying back to Berlin, and finally taking the train back to Jena. All told we'll be travelling for 18 days. We likely won't be updating the blog in the meantime, but you'll hear all about it once we're back, of course.
Größere Kartenansicht
(After having removed everything from the cupboard, there was clearly plenty of room to climb in. Of course!)
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