11 Months!

Dean is 11 months old today. That means (in case anyone out there is REALLY bad at math) that he will be one year in one month. What? How is that possible? Here are pictures of him the day we brought him home from the hospital:

And here is a picture of him in the same rock n' play taken about two weeks ago.

Crazy.

Dean is now army crawling his little heart out. It's nice that he can follow me if I go to another room, because it means he doesn't just cry every time he can't see me. The only down side is...he can follow me. Oh, and that I feel like the worst housekeeper in the world since his onesies are always SOOO dirty! Our floors are impossible! They are this textures linoleum that looks like wood. I love that it's not carpet. I hate that it's...it.  I just bought a steam mop and I hope it helps!

After a few times of this:

we finally borrowed a drill and got cabinet locks installed. We've also had to move the toilet brush to sit on top of the toilet. Yuck.

He has not outgrown his phase of spitting out all fruits that aren't pureed. Ugh. This morning I tried to  sneak some bananas into his oatmeal. This was the result:

It doesn't show up as well in the picture, but it was all over his tummy and legs and ear. I try feeding him a non-pureed fruit every day. Remember how he loved those grapes? I'll tried a few more times to no avail. He used to eat pieces of banana just fine, too. Yesterday he did play with/chew a tiny bit on an apple slice. He didn't throw it on the floor until he'd had it for 5 minutes or so, so I count that as a great success! Good thing he's so cute.

There are plenty of foods that he loves. He normally just eats what we eat for dinner with the help of the food grinder. We're trying to introduce him to more foods not ground up. Normally if we give him some ground up and then follow it up with some just cut in small pieces he'll do okay eating it. And the boy loves yogurt. Cannot get enough. He also gobbles down garlic bread and taco meat. He likes blueberry bagel a lot, too, so that and yogurt is his typical lunch. Here he decided he didn't want the little pieces I had torn off for him and swiped the rest of the bagel when my back was turned. Stinker.

We went to the library last week and Dean had a great time playing with the toys. He loved his activity cube! 

And he would even stand at the tables! He doesn't really pull himself up yet, and normally if we try to get him to stand he just lifts his feet up, so this was huge!

Then, this past Saturday, Trevor and I found a yard sale in our apartment complex, and look what I found for $5! I looked it up on Amazon just for kicks and giggles, and used ones were starting at $40. I felt like a champ! It's Dean's birthday present, but we just cleaned it up and let him have at it.

He still loves books a lot. I've started showering while he's awake more often since he's better at entertaining himself. One day I got out to find him like this just reading his books.

He just loves turning pages!

He's still learning appropriate book choice. Obviously he's tried to read some things he's just not ready for.

We doggy-sat for Trevor's cousin while they went out of town for a wedding. I think Dean ate more of the dog food than Presley did!

He loves our Sonicare toothbrushes and always wants to help us brush! I tried putting it in his mouth to feel, but he wouldn't let me.

He had his first actual throw up. I'm so glad I got to hold him for that. (sarcasm, if you couldn't tell) No, he wasn't sick. Isolated random, incredibly stinky throw up.

So, I tried to take pictures of him with his yellow blanket and elephant, but they didn't turn out so good. Something about him refusing to stay put and crawling towards the camera.

Can someone make the next month go by a little slower? I need some time to plan his party and to snuggle the daylights out of him.