11 months

The time of being 0 years old is quickly drawing to a close.  I can't believe that in just a month we will be celebrating your first birthday!  You're such a bright, curious baby and are still developing so many new skills each month!
About you at 11 months:

• You are a champion at rolling over now, although you still can only roll back and forth over your right side.  It has made diaper changes suddenly difficult because you don't want to hold still and will try to turn over the whole time.  We have to give you an interesting toy to distract you and then just try to change your diaper as quickly as possible.
• We finally moved the crib down to the next level.  Now that you can roll over onto your tummy in your crib and push yourself up on your hands, we knew it was only a matter of time before you reached out and tried to pull up on the crib so we figured we better do it sooner rather than later.  You've always been an active sleeper but now that you can roll you must change positions in your sleep about 200 times a night, or so it seems.
• You are such a social laugher!  By that I mean that if other people in the room laugh, you'll laugh too even though you don't know what's we're laughing at.  It usually makes everyone else laugh harder.
• You like to bounce and "dance" to music when you're in a silly mood.
• You're losing your baby fat and starting to develop a lean little boy of summer body.  You've lost most of the chub on your tummy and thighs and have already tanned quite a bit thanks to all our pool time.
• Speaking of the pool - we have little pool parties with your friends at least once a week in the front yard.
• When you push your dump truck or other big things around you make truck sounds "vrooo vrooo"
• You are getting better at communicating what you want - when you see something or someone you want you reach your hand out toward it and try to babble to tell us what it is.
• You recognize your own treats and toys.  If you see your basket of toys (either at home or at Grandmas) and you want to play you'll reach your hands out and start fussing to be put down so you can play.  You're also very into treats right now and can recognize your yellow Gerber canisters of puffed snacks from across the room even!
• You will share your toys now.  Before if we held our hand out you would show us your toys, but wouldn't let go.  Now you will drop them in our hand, if only for a second before you take them back!
• You LOVE books.  Mommy and Daddy are so thrilled about this.  We got you some new books from the library last week for the first time and we will definitely keep doing that since we've read your own books about a hundred times.  We keep some books in your toy basket in the living room and as you play you often will pull a book toward you and "read" it to yourself, either quietly or out loud.  Of course you can't work the pages quite right but that doesn't bother you at all.
• You have learned how to work light switches.  Thank goodness the only one you can reach right now is the one in the bathroom when I take you in there to wash up after meals.
• You wave at people a lot, although you haven't figured out that it's a greeting.  You just think it's a way to get people to wave back at you.
• You have started to really pay attention to the tv when it's on.  We never have it on much when you're awake anyway, but we're going to have to be extra careful now.  Before you just ignored it but now you'll stare at the screen.
• You babble to yourself a lot when you're playing on your own.  It's fun to watch you keeping yourself busy and trying to imagine what you might be pretending!