Courtney and Dave Schoen: 11 Months Old!

Seriously, am I really planning Grady's 1st birthday parties (yes 2 - we have a large family)? Yikes.

He is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds and everyday I am a mixture of impressed, amazed, bewildered, and a little sad by how fast he is growing. Crawling is a thing of the past! He's actually more interested in running which scares me to death. This is how the first major injury occurred. We were playing his favorite game of "I'm going to get you" (which incidentially when you say this to Grady, he turns around smiling wide as possible and runs straight to you - not quite how the game goes, but he's his own person now!) and BAM. He tripped and went forehead first into the corner of door trim. He cried immediately so hard that I had to blow into his face to get him to breathe again. My heart stopped and I yelled at Dave to go get ice because the goose egg appeared immediately. How he didn't split his forehead open I do not know. Now Dave handled this like a champ, calm and reassuring for Grady. I, on the other hand, failed epically. I could barely hold Grady I was crying so hard. I felt so guilty, even though I was standing 3 feet from him I couldn't catch him from falling fast enough. I tried to convince Dave we should take him to the ER and he calmly tried to reassure me he didn't need to go (the look on Dave's face told a different story - I could tell he wanted to call me crazy and slap me across the face to snap me back to reality, but he knew I was in a terrible emotional state and clearly that wouldn't have helped.) The next day I, of course, called his doctor to be sure and she, along with 20 other moms, told me he has a very strong head and is just fine and it will probably happen again and again and again. Dave's mom told me when Dave was little he would trip over dust so I guess I better get used to it.

So, since that fateful evening my days and nights consist of hovering over Grady, saying no and no touch 500 times, and running interference from our everyday furniture which in my eyes is now evil. Yep - I'm a hoverer. I never thought I would be but motherhood has proved me wrong yet again.

My little bug is walking, running, climbing, basically into everything he shouldn't be these days.

But more importantly, he melted my heart a few days before Christmas when he mumbled those sweet words every mother patiently waits to hear ... "momma". He actually repeated it several times in a row - just to make sure I heard him. So, here we are at 11 months and he has 3 words - dada, momma, and baby. Grady's latest is waving hi and bye-bye. Sometimes he looks at you and sometimes he just pans the room around while waving, but he definitely understands hi and bye. Again, I am in constant amazement with what he has accomplished in just 11 short months.

Now on the eating front, still not too interested in eating small pieces of chicken, turkey, etc. He pretends he's gagging and chocking everytime. Yet, he'll eat the heck out of puffs, cookies, baby goldfish (his fav) so I know he's faking! I'm now trying cinnamon raisen bread, we shall see!

He's busier than ever and is very curious about his toys, how they work, and inspects every inch of them with the cutest serious face I have ever seen.