I have no idea where this last month has gone.  Well, actually I do.  It went to a baby who had an awful tummy bug for two weeks, and then has had Mama and Daddy chasing him as he decided to crawl after all – and is surprisingly good at it!

Kieran picked up a tummy bug right after Grampa John and Great Grandma Cat were out at the beginning of April.  He spent the better part of the next 10 days barfing.  (Paul joined him about 2 days in.)  It took a full two weeks before we were able to get him back on solid food and regular bottles.  It was incredibly hard to watch him go through that, obviously feeling so awful with projectile vomiting and everything.  Three trips to the doctor (Ped and Urgent Care) to make sure he was really OK were necessary – especially after two days of chalky white diapers.  (Dr. Google and our baby books said that could indicate something VERY wrong with his liver, so that freaked us out but good.  Turned out his body just wasn’t digesting the little bit of formula he was taking in , so we were seeing dehydrated formula in his diapers.)  Two weeks after it started, the tummy bug FINALLY went away.  Kieran’s been eating like a champ to make up for it!

Apparently feeling the need to *prove* that he felt better mid-month, Kieran decided to start crawling.  He’d been pulling up on things when Grampa John and Great Grandma Cat were here, but still not crawling.  We’d assumed he would just skip crawling and go straight to walking, but we were wrong!  One Sunday morning (April 17th, to be precise) Kieran windmilled his arms, fell forward and started crawling.  He hasn’t looked back since.  He’s shockingly fast and can crawl surprisingly far before taking a breather.

(Kieran had other ideas during a diaper change one April evening, so Mama acquiesced to his demands to be put on the floor. Fortunately, he decided that he was too tired to go far and came back on his own, having realized that a cool breeze up the bum isn’t what he wanted that evening after all.)

For the most part, he likes to follow us around – pulling up on our legs when he gets to us.  This is a little difficult when I’m in the kitchen trying to make dinner.  Kieran has also discovered the dog door as well.  This is problematic – as I’m convinced he’s going to take a header through the door and topple over on his gigantic noggin any day.  I think for the time being we’re going to have to block the dog door and just let the dog and cats in and out manually.  (If anyone has any suggestions or advice on how to manage a dog door, I’d appreciate hearing it.)  Baby gates were ordered and arrived today, so that’s the project for this weekend.

Going along with pulling up on everything, we knew it was just a matter of time before Kieran started pulling up in his crib.  We’d been meaning to lower his mattress for weeks to head that problem off at the pass – but busy (and then sick) weekends kept stuffing up those plans.  Fortunately, Kieran waited to start pulling up until just last week.  So last weekend Paul lowered Kieran’s crib to the lowest setting, which works just great.  And just in time, as about half the time we go into get Kieran after a nap or in the morning, he’s standing up waiting for us. Kieran has been all over the place in his crib for several weeks now, even pulling upon all fours or sitting.  It’s annoyingly common now to hear him fighting a nap and to go check on him only to find him standing up, whinging.  Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about him toppling over the side now at least.

On the subject of naps though: sleeping at home has gotten pretty good in the last month.  (Pardon me while I go knock on some wood.)  Kieran is sleeping through the night more often than not.  And by sleeping through I mean pulling 9.5-11 hours straight from his 6:30pm bedtime.  If he wakes up around 4:00ish, I’ll go in to change his diaper and give him a bottle, after which he goes back to sleep for 1-3 hours more.  I’ve actually been able to get him to 7:00am!!  Paul is a HUGE fan of this obviously, since that means he gets a real full night’s sleep.  There’s still the occasional 5:15 wakeup, but usually Kieran’s staying down until around 6:00 at least.  He takes 2-3 naps a day on weekends.  During the week though, it’s not so good.  We don’t know why he’s not napping at school for the last 2-3 weeks; or more precisely why he’s not napping for his main teachers at school.  The couple of days he’s had substitute teachers all day, he’s napped like a champ: two 45-90 minute naps each day.  We’ve talked to the teachers and director about some concerns we had and that seems to have helped.  Here’s hoping Kieran gets back to napping at school because our evenings are fairly well ruined when he hasn’t napped all day.  I have to start our bedtime routine within 15 minutes of walking in the door if Kieran hasn’t napped at school.  Which really blows, because we get no time for dinner or baths or play.  Ah well, I know naps change as the kid grows, so maybe he’ll settle into just one HUGE afternoon nap in the next few weeks.  That would be pretty awesome, actually.

Kieran continues to talk up a storm, but nothing specific.  He talks to himself when he’s playing, like he’s narrating what he’s doing.  He mimics sounds we make, and is getting really good with “Mom” and “Mama” – but I’m not ready to say that he’s talking about or to me quite yet.  He talks to himself in his crib in the mornings – sometimes we hear him wake up but he lays in there for upwards of 30+ minutes just hanging out and talking to his hands and feet.

Kieran shows off his Dinosaur impression as he plays with a letter from a friend. (Also, check out the awesome Easter gift Auntie Cassie sent from Belgium! What a cool gift box!)

Kieran is 10 months old as of yesterday, so we’ll be taking his 10 month photos today. (He was too sick for his 9 month photos, but there were plenty of pictures taken during the month, so it’s not like we won’t remember what he looked like, ya know?) 10 months already. How is that possible?