10 Months and Growing Strong

On Sunday, my little man turned 10 months old. How quickly time is passing by. Xander is a handful, to be sure, but such a sweet one. He is the smiliest guy, and easily charms many passers by as well as our dear friends. His smile is getting toothier, he has 4 on top and 2 on bottom. Of course he takes his teething pain out on mama's shoulder, but we're working on that. In fact, after testing me several times yesterday, it seems that he might have just made the connection that biting mama's shoulder yields a stern "no". Through the pain, I enjoyed watching him think through the sequence (bite, be scolded, pause and think, bite, ...).

Xander is becoming more and more mobile. He's up on his feet whenever he can be, and does some scooting along with the furniture. His big sister took her first big steps at 10 months of age, and I was so excited for her. The Lord has blessed me greatly by slowing things down regarding this particular milestone for Xander. Personally, I'm not ready to chase a walker/runner yet. He's quite quick on his hands and knees and has already managed to get into all sorts of mischief with his limited mobility (climbing into the dry bathtub, pulling the gate down and trying to go down the stairs.... twice -- I need to add a Praise the Lord to that one too, it's a miracle he didn't fall down them --, dumping dog water onto the floor and playing in it multiple times, hiding under a tablecloth and eating play-doh, oh the list goes on and on).

Foods Xander loves: cheese, peas, puffs, sweet potatoes, toast, beans
Games Xander loves: chase me (oh he crawls so speedily and giggles so hard, it's so precious), peek-a-boo, jumping, being tickled
Words Xander says: daddy, da-da (those two constantly), mama, ett (eat), waves bye-bye, nigh-nigh, tons of jabber and tries to repeat us frequently... he's a motormouth. and a LOUD motormouth when he's hungry.

Here are some pictures of our time at home on a lazy Sunday afternoon, while we played quite crazily and then paused to take some pictures, and let Libby do the same.