Gallant at Eleven Months

Gallant is almost eleven months old.  Besides being sick for a month, what has he been up to since his nine-month checkup?

He has learned how to do many new things.

Briefly amusing was his new game of sticking out tongues at each other.  What a funny way to be social together!  Thankfully, he was amenable to being trained not to do this in the high chair, and although he still enjoys it no longer initiates it so frequently.

He also learned to use his toys of the "pull on a string and it wiggles" variety.  Two of these hang from parts of his baby corral.  The tricky one is a little toy hamster whose "tail" is a bead that pulls out: like his brother, he learned to pull this with his teeth months before developing the finger coordination to pull hard on a bead.

He became more fond and skilled at standing up.  Eventually he did so much standing that merely standing up was no longer entertaining and he is again content to play with a toy while sitting if this is easier (which makes baths more relaxing).  He takes up to three steps but only in a shuffling-charge aimed at leaning on furniture or a parent.

He loves to practice walking.  In the back yard he has a plastic wagon to push around the lawn.  Inside he has a wooden scooter but its steering handle still confuses him; the wagon is more predictable in its movement.  Gallant is slowly discovering how to grasp the wagon or scooter with hands spread out symmetrically.  He very quickly learned to deal with getting stuck by cruising around to the opposite end and pushing the other way: often when pushing more symmetrically would suffice he instead moves to the opposite end.

He also likes to practice walking while holding hands.  Smiley enjoys helping with this, and also helps by slowly pulling the scooter in circles in the sitting room so Gallant need not steer while "pushing" from behind.

Gallant became much better at eating solid food without gagging.  He learned to take very small bites of harder foods.  One piece of Rice Chex might be a dozen tiny nibbles.  It is nice to have peeled apple and bananas added to the list of usable finger foods.

He adores talking to Grandma on Skype.  We often do this at his second breakfast.  He squeals and chatters when he sees the Skype program starting, and interacts with the video call much more than his brother did at the same age.  He babbles, holds out his finger food for Grandma to see, and demonstrates how well he pounds his hand or spoon on the high chair tray.

Currently Gallant's favorite toys (aside from the wagon and scooter) are his shape sorter (just the peg board, not the shapes) and empty coffee cans.  The shape sorter is really fun to wave around and chew on, but occasionally while he holds one end the peg on the other end will bop him in the forehead.  The coffee cans are drums as well as things he knocks down when we stack them.

He eats a lot of solid food and poops five or six times each day.  At that age his brother wore mainly cloth diapers: we only used disposable diapers two or perhaps three times per day before bedtime (when the extra absorbency was needed) or when we really expected a poop.  Gallant rarely needs a diaper change because of being too wet.  Maybe twice per week.  So our cloth diapers are currently out of rotation.  The good news is that his bottom, although often slightly pink, seems very resistant to diaper rash.  He has only ever had two so far, and both went away quickly.