Ten Months Old

I figured that I should write today's article before I do anything else today. For that reason, I have sat myself down at the computer before making my coffee so that I can get it done.

First, I must say that the sleeping arrangements that we have made for Parker the past few days have worked out tremendously. Parker has slept through the night, or at least we have. I think I heard Parker once early this morning, but I let him work it out. It was probably a little play time. For me it was still sleepy time. We eventually got up with Parker at 6:30am to give him his bottle and change him. Once that was done, the three of us got up for the day. Parker is playing in the kitchen with his mother while he awaits his Septra from me in the next thirty minutes or so.

I had mentioned that we thought Parker would be clapping all by himself shortly. I am not sure if that is going to be the case. He has not been very interested in working on his clapping lately. He has been much more interested in crawling and chasing his balls around his room. Parker flicks his ball and then chases it, when he catches up to it he hits it again so he may chase it. I must say he is a very fast little guy.

Parker turned ten months today. We are hoping for a couple of major accomplishments before he reaches the age of one and before he has his treatment. We want to hear Parker use real words instead of all the garble he spits out (trust me there is a lot of garble), and we want to see him walking. Let me first touch on the talking. I am not sure if it is all the Brainy Baby that Parker watches, or if it is all the stimulation he gets from having two parents at home all the time, but Parker does a lot of baby talk. I think it may be inherited from his mother as she does not have a shortage of things to say at any given time. That said, Parker does have quite the vocabulary or consonants, vowels and sounds that he strings together. I would be very surprised if he was not saying more than mommy and daddy by two months from now.

Secondly, we are hoping that Parker is able to walk without support by the time he turns one. Yes, Parker is a solid boy and his weight-to-length ratio is a little off, but to be honest so is his dad's. Yes, his dad is not the skinniest man in the world, but even when he does look skinny his BMI still says that he is overweight. Maybe Parker has inherited his daddy's body type. I am mentioning all of this because to walk and stand you have to support your own body weight. This is the reason the skeletal survey was done. The doctors wanted to see if Parker had any abnormalities in his leg bones that would hinder him supporting his weight. There were not and for that reason we will not have to do anything special in order for Parker to begin walking.

However, you can rest assured that I will work with Parker so that he has the skills and strength to stand and walk on his own by the time he is a year old. I know that babies generally begin cruising by this age, but Parker does not have a lot of furniture to pick him self up on and cruise about on. Why? Because Parker is limited to where we let him roam in the house. That said, we do have a toy box in his room that we use to work with. Parker and I have been working on getting himself into a standing position all by himself using his toy box. Parker can go from a sitting position to a kneeling one when holding the box or anything else and can pull himself up if I pick my hand on one of his while he does the work of standing up. I may have to put a couple of other things in his room so that he is able to work on that more often.