We've just had the fastest, most-insane year of our life and I can't believe it's already coming to an end. How in the world did this happen?! Summer is winding down (though I'm enjoying every second I'm at the pool and I'm pretending it's not closing in less than a month...I've found August to be equally as depressing as January), fall work will be starting for Josh soon, and we have a one-year-old's birthday party to plan. Wow.
Maverick turned eleven months old on Monday and spent his monthly-birthday Eve (Sunday) with his best big buddy Justin and his uncles. It was a fun night for us to celebrate a number of things...our baby's last month of babyhood (ok that one was mostly just me), the fact that we didn't spend July 31st deep cleaning a farmhouse, and most of all...that OUR BESTIE FOR THE RESTIE IS HOME SAFELY FROM DEPLOYMENT!!!
There's been talk of him wanting to buy a house near our acreage so we can all sit on our front porch and grow old together and it makes my heart so happy. If there's one person who passes the Front Porch Test with flying colors (HIMYM reference) it's Justin Carlson.
Enough about our week...here's what's happening in the Life and Times of Maverick Boersma...
Maverick became the night sleeper I always dreamed of having this past month. During his eleventh month of life. That 'sleeping through the night at twelve weeks' stuff is for the birds and I'll be remembering THAT the next time around (amiright Andrea?!) The Babywise book should include a note at the end to say, "If you follow all these rules perfectly, you still might end up with a baby who isn't a perfect night-sleeper until he's almost a year old." WHY was that not included?! This past month, Maverick had two bad/weird nights out of 31...so I'm saying we've finally made it. And maybe all that hard work will eventually pay off.
Watch. Tonight he will go back to acting like a newborn being up every three hours. I'm just reporting what happened during the past month but it's like he knows I post these updates and then does the opposite the next day so I feel like I lied to everyone...how does he manage that?!
Maverick loves clapping, squeezing his mom and dad, pinching people when he's super excited (we need to start working on this), brushing his teeth with his new banana toothbrush, and feeding himself. His favorites are watermelon, eggs, pasta, cheese and bread. Definitely my child. He also looooves chicken. I still give him baby food once a day to balance whatever he's had for 'real food' and to keep him regular while we transition. He's also not a huge fan of vegetables yet (I think it's the texture more than anything), so I'm giving those in baby food form for a little while yet while he practices with broccoli and carrots, etc. Perhaps he's slower in this area than other babies, but I haven't pushed him because...he's seems happy and content and I'm happy he's happy...so it's all good. I'm sure future children will be faster in this area to keep up with their big brother, but he is and will always be a first-born...he's the one we're supposed to be practicing on, right?
Our schedule continues to get more flexible every month. I can bend him 30-45 minutes one way or another depending on what we have going on and the Morning Nap isn't as imperative to the success of our day if it doesn't happen. He handles church on Sunday's really well, despite being in his classroom for nearly four hours when the day is said and done (serving this summer in the Toddler Room during the 11:00 has been...interesting). He can almost always stay awake in the car with a toy if I need him to. His favorite thing is to stand up next to the coffee table or stand with help. We all still love wrestling and our favorite time to tickle him and make him laugh is after he's eaten, right before bed. I know we're probably not 'soothing' and 'relaxing' and 'calming' him to go to sleep...but it's fun and that's what Josh is home so we squeeze in some extra play time. He still falls asleep just fine, so it all works out.
In the crawling department...well...it's still more of a bottom-scoot. Maverick definitely travels around, moves to his tummy to push-up and scoot, and is a professional at reversing...but not much up-on-his-knees activity. It's fantastic, but it's starting to frustrate him more and more. He'll get there. ;)
Here's how we're rolling this month:
5/6 - Eat (only about 1/3 of the nights this month)
7:30/8 - Wake up, eat
9:00 - Breakfast
10:30 - Nap
11:30 - Wake up, eat.
12:30 - Lunch
2:00 - Nap
4:00/4:30 - Wake up, eat
6:00 - Supper
8:00 - Eat
8:30 - Bedtime
It seems Maverick has settled into a routine of sleeping 11 hours at night. No matter what I try...it's almost always 11 hours straight. It's supposed to be 12, but after following all the rules for the past eleven months we're stuck at 11 hours AND I'LL TAKE IT. He goes to bed happy and has been waking up at 7:30 happy...so...it is what it is. I usually leave him in there to play until I'm ready to get him at 8, or I'll feed him early if we're headed somewhere...but I'm loving this new flexibility and how he handles it.
Speaking of flexibility. Our challenge this month will be the fair. Maverick has not been known to nap in his stroller (too many things to see and explore!). I'm going to get creative so we can still enjoy having our baby at the fair to see the animals and taste funnel cake...but also end the day with an afternoon to ourselves for our yearly Fair Date. Nana will our hero on fair day to make all of this happen because she knows how much her son looks forward to spending hours looking at every. single. tractor. at the fairgrounds.
I'm tentatively planning to cut the morning nap around one year...he's already cutting it to an hour or less on his own (that's when I saw the biggest difference with his night-sleep last month) so I hope we're moving in the right direction. On the mornings he's skipped the nap altogether he handles it well and takes a really good one in the afternoon. Plus, Mary Jo cuts morning naps with all her babies once they hit a year and she's the authority on this kind of stuff...so that's what I'm going to try. I'm looking forward to one, 1:00 nap after lunch and a regular afternoon quiet time.
Now that Maverick is eating real 'meals' three times a day, it's easier to stretch him longer between the times he's breastfed because that. is. on. it's. way. out. I have yet to pull the trigger on cutting the 4:00 because I'm nervous it will throw off his night sleep. Call it First Time Mom problems...I AM LOVING ALL THE SLEEP I'M GETTING. I'm in a hurry to be done breastfeeding...but also...not. Because we FINALLY have a baby who sleeps through the night. A year of breastfeeding a baby IS HARD YOU GUYS. This is what I've been repeating to myself these last few months, "This is my job. This is my job. This is my job." The other day Josh said, "You know the sooner you're done breastfeeding him, the sooner I will become the favorite." And I just thought to myself...most moms would probably start crying over that statement...but strangely, I feel very neutral about it. The appeal of wearing real bras and my life not revolving around seven different eating times and being able to banish the breast pump to the basement once and for all sounds pretty spectacular right about now. Josh likes shooting guns and sports and tractors...he was always bound to be the favorite and I made my peace with it looooong ago.
Speaking of all that breastfeeding stuff...I pulled out the calculator for a little bit of math fun (mark that under Things No One Ever Thought Mollie Would Say) and I could be wrong...but I calculated that by the end of this year, I'll have spent approximately 1020 hours feeding Maverick. I fed him on a three-hour schedule for thee months and a four-hour schedule for eight months...that equals about 2040 total times I fed him, at about a half hour each time. Holy. And that's actually pretty conservative when you figure it took a lot longer in the beginning and there were a few bad months where he was up more than once in the night. That's probably balanced out by the number of times he's been babysat and fed a bottle, but even that's been pretty limited. Mom's everywhere do this and survive but...I'm just being honest...it's a little insane. Just one of the many reasons I'm ready to wait a whiiiiiile before Maverick gets a sibling.
More quick fun facts about our little buddy...shoes confuse him and it's hilarious. His new favorite sound is growling. He thinks it's funny to fake cough. He gets super excited when I break out puffs from the diaper bag and loves anyone who will feed them to him (works like a charm during D6 on Sunday's). Puppies at the Farmer's Market can hold it attention for a crazy-long time. He's back to loving walks in his stroller (a few months ago he went through a cranky-stroller phase), but he haaaates his changing table all of a sudden. It's the weirdest thing. As soon as he knows we're heading to do a diaper change the fake crying starts. Luckily his new toothbrush is a pretty good distraction. What's funny is he used to LOVE being laid down to get his diaper changed, but would cry when I put him in his crib for naps/bed. Now he loves being laid down in his crib for sleep and cries about the changing table. What a freak.
I could probably mention...size two diapers during the day, size three overnight diapers at night. I think he's about ready to move up a size with those...his tummy is getting big! He's almost grown out of all 3-6 and 6 month clothes and 6-12 month Gap stuff is fitting best. He's just starting to wear 6-9 and 9 month stuff. But that means all the cuuuute stuff I found in size 9-12 and 12 month for summer will probably be getting packed away unworn unless a. He hits a huge growth spurt, or b. We have an unreasonably warm fall. Most of it will look cute as layers though and most of it was found at Overflow...so I'm not too worried.
Maverick is still really. loud. Sqwaks, yells, whines, squeals, and coughs...all very prevalent during our day. He likes to say, 'A-Da!' the most and I always respond with..."Daddy?? Maverick where's your daddy? What's daddy doing? Daddy's working! We miss daddy!" and he says it some more. Typically he says the dadadada stuff when he's excited and the mamamamama sounds when he's mad/whining. Nice, Maverick...reeeeal nice.
It's so surreal writing his second to last update...most mom's probably think this much detail is a little...umm...overkill? But I've actually referenced previous months multiple times when I can't remember something about our schedule...I think I'm going to thank myself for writing these when it comes to future kiddos, but for right now it does seem a little ridiculous. Whatever.
I'll include a note to those future kiddos right now...sorry you probably won't have written updates each month for the first year of your life or a perfectly over-documented life on Instagram down to each outfit you wore for the first six months. You'll probably get away with more stuff (just ask Uncle Nathan and Uncle Caleb), so can we call it even and move on?
MmB
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