Drew at 10 months and 1 week

Drew is a speedy crawler.  As you can see he is practicing the walking thing. He took one single step on Friday without holding on to anything.  Drew is my earliest to do this, by far.

However, he is the slowest on talking.  All three of the big kids had at least 20 words when they turned one year old.  I will be surprised if he is saying that many words by a year since he only has two months to go.  A list of Drew's words to date:

Mama

Dada

Up pronounced "Pah" (when he wants to be picked up)

Oh (he says this constantly and with all different level of inflection, and I love it)

Wow (when you hand him a new or favorite toy)

Ball pronounced "Bah"

Drew loves to eat and gets very excited and impatient when he sees food unless there is a social fun activity going on in which case he is more excited about the social scene than the food.  He has been know to eat breakfast twice because he eats before the big kids get up and then he sees them eating and wants what they have too.  His favorites, if I had to choose a few, would be watermelon, banana, yogurt, chicken, carrots, hummus, avocado, and all Mexican food.  The only thing he sometimes rejects is spinach or lettuce and it just depends on how it is prepared or what dressing is on it.  He is feeding himself mostly.  He is starting to get the pincher grasper thing down now.  I help with spoon foods like yogurt, applesauce, and hummus.  He is my earliest to feed himself also.

As for sleeping, after all the time zone changes, I now know that he has a harder time adjusting to even one hour time difference than my other kids, but it only lasts a day or two.  He had no problem sleeping in different houses for our whole vacation though.  His naps have gotten, sadly, shorter than they were one moth ago.  About a month ago he started taking 30-45 minute long naps.  During this time we went back and forth on having a third nap depending on the day.  After deciding this might not be just a phase, I tried extending his wake time in the morning.  I moved naptime from 9 to 9:30am and he started sleeping for 1 1/2 hours for both naps.  This is still not the two 2 hour naps that he was doing before we left for vacation and the first couple of weeks of vacation, but it is way better than the 30 minute naps.  You take what you get.  Occasionally, he will still wake up after 30 minutes but many times he will go back to sleep within 20 minutes of letting him cry/fuss undisturbed.  I have NEVER had a baby fall back asleep after waking early from a nap...EVER, and I tried with all of them.  More proof that Drewy is a one of a kind!  His schedule doesn't look nice and Babywised, but it is what it is and he is mostly a happy guy.  So, here is the schedule for my awake-way-too-much baby Drew...

Wake @ 6am

Nap @ 9:30-11am

Nap @ 2-3:30pm

Bed @ 7:30pm

The only other notable thing, besides him getting cuter by the day, is that for the last month he has started chilling out during our bedtime routine.  He will sit and look at the book (He is pointing to things in the book that interest him now, mostly balls!) or at the wall, and then turn around and cuddle me while I pray and sing with him.  It still only takes 5-7 minutes to do the whole thing, but he is letting me enjoy those minutes instead of wrestle to keep him in my arms.  That said, he does dive out of my arms into the crib the minute I stand up form his rocking chair.

**Later this same day Drew learned to crawl up stairs.  He made it almost to the top before someone noticed!  Oops!