10 months

This picture is Zeke carrying a piece of felt cheese in his mouth from Ayla's play kitchen that he carries around like a dog with his bone.


Yesterday Zeke turned 10 months. What a 10 months it has been. It's hard to put into words. I have said many times how sweet and charming Zeke is. How funny and lovable and smiley he is. He brings so much to our family and I am so glad to be our family of 4.

But what a challenging 10 months it has been. At times it has been overwhelming. We are so tired. Zeke, no matter how hard we try or what we do, still wakes up at night and on his best day sleeps in to the late hour of 5:30a.m. Someone kindly reminded me this week that someday I will miss this time in my life, but for the record I wouldn't mind getting a little more sleep! Hope the time change tonight works to our advantage. All sleep challenges aside, he is however a really good eater and has really taken to finger foods and self feeding.

As much as he eats though, Zeke is still just the tiniest guy ever! If it wasn't for all the ways he is developing, you would look at him and think he was a 6 month old. He is still army crawling- no need to learn how to really crawl when you have nice slippery hard wood floors to scoot across. He pulls himself up on everything and does this really cute "back up into a sitting position" thing. He loves the song "Twinkle Twinkle Little star" which we usually sing to him as a distraction to get that last bite of baby food in him or to get him to lay still for a diaper. He will grin and wave both of his hands- his own little sign language movements along to the song, he does it only with that song.

Zeke and Ayla are so fun and interesting to watch together too. I feel like they are bonding more. Ayla, in true big sister fashion, doesn't want Zeke to get into her stuff. And Zeke in true little brother fashion wants whatever Ayla has. Sometimes you can almost see him thinking, "what are you up to? What is that? Can I play too?" Ayla is very good at distracting him and helping cheer him up if need be. But it is also not uncommon to hear things like, "Ayla don't sit on Zeke!" "Ayla! Don't smack him on the head with that!"

As much as he and Ayla bond, he has his own bonds with Jake and I too. As Ayla sweetly puts it sometimes, "I like daddy a little better, but I like mommy too and Zeke likes mommy a little better but likes daddy too." : )

One of Jake's favorite things with Zeke is their "goya goya" conversations at bedtime. As Jake takes him upstairs Zeke will say "goya goya" over and over and then as they are rocking in the chair he will do it again. jake always hands him over to me so I can nurse him and lay him down. As Jake leaves the room Zeke will arch his back and watch Jake leave the room upside down and wave to him and say "goya." Kinda hard to describe, but very cute.

Happy 10 months Zeke!