Eating/Food! : Ben finally loves his food! He is gobbling up big helpings of veggies that I make for him...such as carrots mixed with spinach, sweet potatoes, and green smoothie type things! I blend up some spinach into his fruit and he doesn't even notice! It is a good way to sneak green things into his diet. He usually refuses any green type veggies if they aren't mixed with an orange veg or fruit. I remember Oliver being the same way. We were more accommodating to Oliver's likes and dislikes...we'd usually just feed him what he'd eat, but with Ben I feel like he should eat healthy from the beginning on and I am more choosy about what I give him. He is still really small compared to O at his age. His height was in the 4th percentile at his 9 month check up and his weight was the 16th. I also started mixing a little flax oil into his food once or twice a day just to give him some more good fats. He will eat a good amount of baby yogurt each day, that seems to be his staple. I will mix a little baby oatmeal and fruit with it usually. He really loves his food now though, which is such a huge relief to me since he's a little guy! He loves to snack on little bites of oranges or clementines or Cheerios. He always seems to calm down a bit when he sees the yellow Cheerios box.
He is still nursing a few times a day....mainly just for comfort or small snacks to get him to a meal. My milk supply has dipped quite a bit but I'm not as worried about it now that he is eating good fruits and veggies. We will usually nurse at 4:30 a.m. and then he goes right back to sleep and sometimes we'll nurse again when he wakes up in the morning, depending on how hungry he is. I like to try to feed him his breakfast before nursing or giving him a bottle in the morning.
Sleeping: Ben is sleeping so much better at night. About 2 months ago we changed up his nap schedule to the 2-3-4 sleep schedule. Finally, a day or 2 after he turned 9 months old, we decided enough was enough and let him cry it out when he woke up during the night. He had been waking up wanting to nurse or have a bottle 3-4 times during the night and we were done! Now he usually sleeps from 8 p.m.-4:30 a.m. , will wake up then and nurse and go right back to sleep until 7 or so. I am totally fine with getting up once to nurse him and it is just working out for us right now. I'm sure we could drop that feeding if we needed to but right now I don't mind it. He goes to bed, usually awake, really well. He just snuggles down under his blanket and he hand him his two loveys and he cuddles them and goes to sleep...sometimes chatting but rarely crying. He likes his crib now. I am trying to sit him in the crib while I take a shower...just for a safe place for him to be to play. We are working on that, he usually gets mad.
Development: Ben is crawling backwards, butt bouncing and army crawling around now. He gets very frustrated that he cannot crawl forward but he does get around pretty swiftly by bouncing on his butt! He took his first tumble off of the one step down into our family room this week. He was very surprised and upset by this but got over it quickly.
Ben has started to shake his head "no" when he doesn't want any more food...sometimes he'll even do it when I tell him no...he will smile and shake his head and it is very cute. He definitely knows what "no" means. He will try to grab something (cords!) he shouldn't have and we quickly say "no" and move towards him to take it away and he will shake whatever he has in his hands and yell at us. It is very cute and funny but also kind of sassy!
He will kind of move his hand when we say "bye-bye" or "hi" so we think he knows that waving is associated with those things. He also tries to clap his hands once in awhile when we clap for him and cheer "yaaay!"
