Tristan is 10 months old

Another month has gone by and this time, we get to enjoy cake :) Actually, we enjoyed cake last month too but it was just delayed due to my cold. Boy, has the last month been a rocky one for us! Daycare, feeding frustrations, crawling everywhere, touching everything... aaaaaahh!

First off, daycare is still going pretty well. Tristan cried for the first time in daycare right after I dropped him off last Thursday. It could have been due to a couple of things. The night before, I had a friend of mine babysit Tristan while I took my shower and it didn't go so well. He pretty much cried the whole time that evening. After that incident, maybe Tristan was scared of me leaving him with anyone. Or it could be that when I dropped him off at daycare there was another crying baby there and Tristan was a bit scared. Anyway, he cried and I left quickly so that it wouldn't get worst. Surprisingly, his crying didn't affect me too much. It was his third week in daycare and I was getting used to leaving him there.

For the past week and a bit, feeding has been a challenge for us. Tristan has no problem eating his cereal and fruit for breakfast. He has no problem with eating any fruit, cheese, or bread. The problem is when we spoon feed him his lunch or dinner, which consists of some kind of vegetable, meat, or meat alternative. I find that simpler foods with just 2 ingredients or 1 ingredient works better. Things that are not as chunky works better. An ingredient that is slightly on the sweeter side such as carrot works better. Using my fingers to feed him rather than a spoon some times work better. Distracting him with a toy some times work too. At times, we had to use trickery and some times force to feed him and we know it is bad. Now, we have agreed not to use force because we don't want him to be scared and to develop a bad association with eating. Again, Jean-Louis is a bit harsher than I am and would prefer force over trickery, if we had to choose one. Big surprise.

We decided to look into it and it appears that feeding difficulties at 9-10 months is quite common. And some people have it way worst than us too! Here are a couple of sites which talk about other parents' feeding problems:

Refusing Solids at 10-12 months
My baby suddenly hates her favorite foods. Help!

We're going to try to let him feed himself more finger foods. We'll see how that works. Feeding already takes a long time so this will only make it longer. He's not quite ready but we are about to train him on eating with a spoon. Right now, he is just exploring and playing with the spoon. Today is the first day he is using his training bowl as well.

Tristan started taking formula milk just in the afternoon three days ago. He has no problem taking it from a bottle. I know some babies become quite attached to their bottles and milk so I want to be careful Tristan is not given too much milk or drinking from the bottle too much. He still doesn't drink from his sippy cup. There are tons of scratch marks from him gnawing on it rather than sucking it. I have only witnessed him sucking on it twice so far. He is drinking more and more water though so that's good.

I am still breastfeeding. I'm down to just 2-3 times a day now. I still plan to nurse Tristan until he is 1 year old. I am a bit sad that I have to use formula since my milk supply is depleting. With so many other things, this attachment is also hard to let go somehow. On the bright side, we won't be tied down to being at home so much now since I don't have to worry about nursing in private as much. Jean-Louis can also take over the bottle feeds when he is home :)

Baby babble is great fun to watch. Tristan usually does it when he is happy. Yesterday, I finally heard him say "mama!" Yes, I was very pleased :) On top of baby babble, Tristan can sign "more," "milk," "ball," and "sun." Nice progress indeed.

He's not walking on his own yet but Tristan crawls, stands, and walks while holding onto something. He also just started to pull out the safety plugs from the electric outlets on the wall. So much for baby proofing. Baby proofing ends at 10 months for those things I guess. Climbing stairs is by far Tristan's favorite activity. He enjoys it more than playing with his toys. He could climb all day if you let him! It's great he's active but he has got to eat more to compensate for it.