A neighbor brought us a squash, which Wes quite liked. In its natural form, anyway. I haven’t steamed and mashed it yet for him to try in its actual edible form. Maybe tomorrow.

His therapist dropped off a baby food grinder for me to use to prepare grown-up food in baby form for Wes (veggies, pasta, meat, etc.). I probably get a C as a mom in the eating department because I have to force myself to feed Wes food besides milk. This is mainly because whatever Wes eats you always see again in the form of spit-up. I’m not sure how long it will take for him to outgrow that. It gets tiring, always cleaning it up. At least milky spit-up is somewhat a neutral color. Last week I gave him lasagna (stage 3 baby food, and he did great with it, even without teeth), but then I had to do a whole load of laundry of shirts, bibs, blankets, and burp rags covered in reddish-pinkish spit-up. And it was three days before I felt like giving him solids again after that. I know. C-mom for sure.

Wes is eleven months old now. I remember when he turned six months John and I came to the surprising realization that we were parents of a kid half-way to one year old. And now we’re parents of a kid less than a month off from one. Kind of crazy.

He is progressing well enough in his own ways. He can crawl backwards, but he only scoots back just far enough to push himself up to sitting. He doesn’t seem to realize he could be cruising around the house if he wanted, as long as he doesn’t mind moving backward.

He’s into size 3-6 month clothes. I realized today that we’ll get to reuse his Superman costume from Halloween last year (which he absolutely swam in as a 4-pound baby), because the costume is made for babies up to 9 months. And even though he’ll be over a year old by October 31st, we’ll be lucky if he’s wearing size 6-month clothes.

Wes is a super-happy kid. He smiles a lot, and giggles a lot when he’s tired but happy. One of my favorite things to do is lie next to him on the floor or on our bed when he’s winding down for a nap and is in a good mood. I can baby-wrestle with him, pull him on my tummy, tickle him, throw him in the air, and he laughs and laughs. It’s so fun being a mom sometimes.

It’s official: Wes can push himself up from all-fours into sitting. And he can do it well!

The downside of this is that putting Wes down for a nap, unless he’s already passed out or practically so, is basically pointless. I lay him down on his back and leave the room; a few minutes later I hear him making noise, and his voice sounds like it’s being projected OVER the crib wall. Because now he’s sitting up. And once he’s sitting up he can’t get back down to the lying position, unless he falls over. (Except that his balance is actually quite good, so he’s usually stuck upright.)

I keep having to go in and push him back down and tell him to go to sleep . But a minute later he pops himself right back up again. I come in and find him like this, looking all pleased with himself:

He seems to enjoy his new trick. Whenever he pushes himself up he gets a gigantic smile across his face and is truly happy.

Video of Wes pushing himself to sitting.

For my birthday some of my family came over and we played a game of croquet in the backyard. It’s one of my favorite games ever, but it was about 100 degrees outside, so we pushed through the game as fast as we could. I took some photos of us playing, but the little guy on the sideline stole the show.

Today I handed Wes to John so I could make some dinner. When I came back upstairs Wesley’s eyes were glued to the computer screen. Like daddy, like baby.

It was my birthday yesterday, and I decided to treat myself with a mini photo shoot with my baby.

Right after the camera captured the photo above Wes spit up all over my face. I have a picture of that, too, since the camera was on 10-second delay, but it’s a little too graphic to post. Suffice it to say that I’m visibly grossed out and Wes has his hand on my cheek like he’s trying to calm me, and he has a look on his face like, “What’s the big deal, Mom?”

Lately I’ve been trying to help Wes learn how to go from all fours to sitting. I think he’s starting to get it. (See video below.)

Wesley pushing back up to sitting.

Wes is also getting to where I can play games with him, which is really fun. Yesterday we played one where I draped a cloth over the side of his crib, and he’d roll over and grab it and pull it down. We did that over and over, and he really liked it.

He thinks it’s so fun when I put a toy on my head and tip my head forward so it falls off, and then I do the same thing to him. When he feels me set the toy on his head his face lights up with this look of delight, and he likes it when the toy slides off. We can do this game over and over again, too.

When he’s tired, especially, it’s easy to make him giggle. He’s ticklish and just loves it when we “get him.”

And, like all babies, he’s fascinated by paper. Any variety: church programs, daily comics, bills… Maybe it tastes good?

A few random things.

1.

I left Wes with a neighbor yesterday and saw Mama Mia with a friend. It was totally fun and carefree to go see a movie. (Ah, the pleasures of my pre-mom life…) Anyway. The movie: Mama Mia was playing in London when I lived there six years ago and I had a roommate who saw it three times (which is not cheap, even at student prices). I never understood why, until now. Now I wish I’d gone to see it with her because I’m sure I would’ve loved it. Mama Mia is a fun musical. It has all the right elements for me–upbeat music, decent storyline, a dash of romance, a bit of humor, and, of course, cheesiness (what’s a musical without the background characters spontaneously bursting into chorus or the entire cast suddenly organizing themselves into dance lines with jazz hands?).

Meryl Streep is 59 years old but hardly shows her age. She is gorgeous, spunky, lithe (she even does the splits in one scene while jumping on the bed), and–surprise!–she can sing. She’s got a nice voice.

I loved Amanda Seyfried, who plays her daughter, but I found I had strong feelings against her in-movie fiance. I felt kind of bad for him because I’m not sure if he was supposed to be unlikeable or if that’s just how his character turned out.

Mr. Darcy (oops, I mean Colin Firth) plays one of Meryl Streep’s former lovers, and even though I love him simply for being Mr. Darcy I thought he did a great job. Even singing. Apparently when they offered him the job he told them he rarely sings outside the shower, but they convinced him he’d do all right. And he did.

Pierce Bronson (a.k.a. James Bond) on the other hand… I think he’s got a great voice, but he sounds better when backed up by at least a dozen chorus members. He did okay, all considering. And he’s not bad to look at if you’re a woman over 35. I mean, the guy’s a walking cologne ad.

The very funniest bit of the film is when the fiance is about to leave the beach for his bachelor party and the chorus (all men) suddenly emerges from the ocean behind him wearing snorkel gear and spontaneously starts dancing on the pier in colored flippers. It’s probably one of those “you have to see it to get it” things. But trust me, it’s totally funny.

The music was fun. The movie was fun. The disco suits they wore during the closing credits were super fun. It’s a girl movie, no question. It was a good one to see without John.

2.

Today I bought Wes some clothes–two sleepers and one packet of onesies. I don’t buy him many clothes (he has a lot of hand-me-downs from family). But sometimes it’s nice to dress him in something and think to myself, “I gave him this.” Plus, I’m a total sucker for those sleepers that have feet in the shape of animals. One of the sleepers I got him today has feet shaped like puppies and the other like little bears. It’s strange how my taste in fashion has evolved to include the finer points of baby jammies.

3.

I was up in American Fork and went to the Best. Bakery. Ever. Flour Girls & Dough Boys is an artisan bakery (meaning EVERYTHING is from scratch), plus it’s a cafe. You can order breakfast, lunch, dessert–anything. The atmosphere is classy and comfortable. Think vintage chandeliers, turquoise walls, checkered floor, orange-framed menus. I noticed a shelf full of kids’ books (I read somewhere that they have story time for preschoolers), which I thought was a great addition to a cozy cafe.

After salivating over displays of cheesecakes, gourmet cupcakes, chocolate croissants, shortbread cookies, etc., I brought home a loaf of asiago cheese bread. It was $5.49, which I thought was a lot, but it really does taste the best of any asiago cheese bread I’ve had. Most bakeries bake white bread and sprinkle the cheese on top. Here, the cheese makes up 20% of the dough, too, so the overall flavor is nice and cheesy-salty.

I saw on the menu that they also scoop Spotted Dog Creamery ice cream, which is made locally in Salt Lake City. Some of their sundaes sound pretty delish, so maybe next time I’ll get a loaf to go and a sundae to stay.

Last week we had playgroup at the park and I remembered my camera. This is the first time Wes didn’t try to eat the swing, and he was game for letting me push him in it, but he wasn’t especially, shall we say, excited.

In other news, today Wes had his first visit from a speech therapist. Apparently a lot of normal-type baby skills are good indicators of how they’ll do speech-wise. The lady, Donna, evaluated him using a system called PLS-4 (Preschool Learning something something to age 4?). She checked things like how he handles toys, what sounds he makes, interaction level with other people, etc.

She said Wes has great eye contact and is very aware of things around him. She also said his tongue control is pretty good. (It helps a lot that Wes hasn’t been as congested as many DS kids are; when you can’t breathe through your nose you tend to hang your mouth open to breathe.) Apparently the palate is soft and forms around your tongue, so the more the tongue stays in the mouth where it belongs, the better your speech will be later on. Hopefully Wes won’t be too bad off in that area.

I think her primary concern is that he doesn’t make a sufficient variety of noises yet. He rated really low in that area (”expressive”), but better in the “auditory” area. Overall, he scored in the 32nd percentile (9-month equivalent) for “auditory” and 1% (4-month equivalent) for “expressive,” which averaged out (and don’t ask me how the math works here) to the 4th percentile (6-month equivalent).

Which made me want to ask for a re-take.

During her evaluation she asked how many vowel sounds he makes and I said that I wasn’t sure, but the one I hear the most is “Uuungh,” which he makes when he’s mad. So she put him down for one and I guess that weighted his score badly because he should be making multiple vowel sounds by now.

But anyway. Setting aside my parental bitterness, the gist is that he’s doing really well in some areas and needs improvement in others. Some of her suggestions are:

1. Practice turn-taking with Wes. I do something, then let him respond either by mimicking me or reacting (like laughing). Wes isn’t a great mimicker yet (but he’s great at staring), so this will be something to work on. The lady said she can’t stress enough how important learning turn-taking is, so I hope we get good at it.

2. Help Wes become more aware of his mouth region. She said to man-handle him a lot. Touch his mouth, massage his cheeks, anything that will help him become more aware of his mouth area. She suggested patting his mouth when he’s making noise (like an Indian call), get him used to that, and then try patting his mouth when he’s not making noise. Eventually he should learn to make the Indian call spontaneously.

Who knew parenting would involve so many things to learn? Wes is so capable, sometimes I worry I hold him back because I don’t know how to push him well enough, or just don’t push him enough. Thankfully, he manages to progress anyway.