Feeding- Eli still drinks 4 bottles of formula a day and he eats 3 meals of solids. His favorite food is cheese and loves regular milk. He likes oatmeal, banana, avocado, yam, galbi jimm, scramble eggs and anything my mom makes. He is OK with carrots and he dislikes yogurt and peas. We've been trying to give him a little bit of everything we eat and it's been working. He is not picky as long as the foods are yummy. We tried just blending some beef and carrots in his baby cooker and he rejected it since it's not seasoned.
Sleep- Since Eli has been staying awake longer, we've been taking him out to restaurants since Month 9. He loves to eat table foods so it's easy to keep him busy at the restuarant. At first, we would still have to rush back home for his naps, but by now, we can take our time and not rush. He is taking two naps now. His first nap is around 9 - 9:30AM for about an hour to an hour and half. His second nap is around 1:30 PM to 2:30PM for about an hour as well. His bedtime is any where from 6:30 to 7:30PM depending on how much sleep he had that day. For the most part I don't have to soothe him to sleep. We usually read a book or two (sometimes I skip that if we are running late), put him in his sleep sack and then I just put him down. He falls asleep usually within minutes. Sometimes though, if he is having trouble sleeping, I would have to go back in and soothe him again but it doesn't happen often. I'm much more relax about going back in since I see that he is not developing bad habits even though I have been going in when he needs me. He usually wakes up around 6AM in the morning and we usually wait at least 30 minutes before going in to get him. He likes to throw his pillow out of his crib to protest! :)
Teeth- Eli has 8 teeth total (4 up top and 4 on the bottom). He hasn't been showing much discomfort when he teethes but he sure drools a lot.
Play- We let Eli crawl in our living room now. We just make sure that we mop the floor every week and the dogs are not allowed to play in the living room anymore. Because of that, it's been easier to care for him since we just let him crawl/roam around and he entertains himself pretty well. He still puts everything in his mouth but I'm more relaxed about dirt and germs now.
When he is in his play area, he likes to throw all of his toys out of the gated area one by one. It's the funniest thing. We try to have his toy bins right outside of the play yard so his toys can land inside the bins and it saves us some trouble picking all of them up... so far... minimal success.
Since I've been on summer vacation, I take care of Eli most of the time and I've been taking him out a lot. He is friendly and smiles at everyone in restuarants but still doesn't like to be held by people he doesn't know.
Taking care of him is much easier now in the sense that he is on a good schedule where I can take him out and he sleeps independently. But it is also much harder now because I have to be on 100% when I am with him. He constantly needs to be engaged and entertained.
He will be a year old in a month!
