update

Casen at 11 ½ months:

· Can stand for a few seconds on his own

· Says “wow”, “what’s that”, “who’s that”, “ma ma”, “da da”, “hi dad”

· Claps hands

· Shakes head no

· Likes hot and sour foods

· Likes to dance by moving up and down or side to side

· Like to sit Indian style

· Is afraid of trees, especially pine trees

· Has tried his own feces…how many people can say that?

· Loves to wrestle and play “chase” on the couch

· Likes to point at everything

· Likes to hang upside down

· Loves to watch Little Einsteins

· Loves to explore and get into everything

· Can snap his fingers (at least he tries)

· Can “get his tickle on” (moves his pointer finger and tries to tickle you)

Casen is SO fun. He loves to be like mom and dad and eat the same foods we do. Often he will refuse his if we are eating regular food because he always prefers to eat what we do. He imitates so much with so many things it’s surprising what he picks up on at such a young age. The other day we had music on while I was feeding him and I started snapping to the music. A few seconds later I noticed he was trying to snap too. So cute! And so fun to see him learning so much.

Lately he has started to really like some toys that he wasn’t much interested in a few months ago. There’s a truck that he will push around that keeps him busy for up to a ½ hour sometimes. We also got a hand me down push toy that has balls on the inside that pop when the toy is pushed (I’m sure you all had one when you were younger). He’s not quite old enough for this yet since he can’t walk and push it but he really wants to play with it so it’s a love hate relationship for him because he tries so hard to get the balls to pop but then gets really frustrated when he can’t push it. I tried to get him to focus on some other toys when this was happening but he insisted on playing with the popper.

He’s also been very good at entertaining himself lately by exploring and usually he’ll play by himself while I get the house clean or laundry done. The only problem is that lately he’s figured out how to open the cupboards in the kitchen and we haven’t gotten them baby proofed yet. We need to get on that really soon or I might have more exciting yet dangerous stories for here.

And speaking of exciting stories….Aaron said this one would be a good one to write down and I haven’t yet so I figured here would be a good place for it. I do have to thank my brother Jared for doing this when he was younger. Because I heard of his experience from my mom when this happened to Casen I was able to deal with it without gagging or bawfing (barfing).

So one morning recently we got Casen out of bed and could tell he needed to be changed which is a usual for him in the morning. He was wearing a “night sack” for his pj’s (it’s like a big sack with a zipper) and when I unzipped him we saw that his diaper had come off in the night and all of its contents had spilled out into his pj’s. Awesome. So I took off his diaper and stuck him in the tub to clean him off. I completely forgot about rolling up his diaper and left it on the couch. Later that day he was playing on the couch while I was in the kitchen cooking. I look over to check on him and I notice some brown stuff on his fingers. For a split second I couldn’t think what it would be and then I remember his diaper must have been sitting there still. I ran over to him but before I could get to him he put one of his fingers in his mouth! Sick of a-mer-i-ca!!!! WHY DID I LEAVE THAT DIAPER THERE??? Anyway we both lived through the experience without throwing up. In fact, he didn’t even react to what he ate and I was able to keep it together by not really thinking about it. And now it makes a good story I guess.

Well in 17 days Casen will be 1 year!! I can’t believe he’s already going to be that old!

We love our little man!