A Much Belated Thanksgiving and 11 Months

 I'm obviously quite behind in updating the blog.  The longer I've waited, the more challenging it's been to get back to it.  I'm going to try to catch up now, though.

Isaiah turned 11 months on Thanksgiving Day, so I'll combine these two posts together.  Unfortunately, I haven't been great about writing down things for the past couples of months, so some of these developments run together.  Shortly after 10 months, he started waving bye-bye consistently (with his hand facing him initially, which has now transitioned to a full-out wave with his whole arm).  He also started clapping when he's happy/excited/generally approves of something (especially food).  Around 11 months, he started standing without holding on to anything for a few seconds at a time.  He continued to eat nearly everything we sat in front of him, and meals became a lot easier as we could just fill his tray with food and let him feed himself with his fingers.  Here are a few pictures from 10/25-11/25/10:

Corban's (left) First Birthday Party (Stetson, Corban's cousin feeing Isaiah a block).  These boys were born within 2 months of each other and first met each other prenatally.

Hanging out with Brandon and Sarah for a UT football game



"Helping" with the Laundry



He started making this really cute "squinchy" face that looks exactly like a face Chris made as a kid.



Swinging at Overton Park

I had to work on Thanksgiving Day but got off around lunchtime.  After packing up, we headed to Waverly for Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, stepdad, siblings and their respective families.  It was the first time we had all three boys together since visiting Landon in the hospital.  It's funny how different their personalities are turning out to be...Isaiah likes to be the center of attention, Jude is very adventurous (he climbed the steps while we were there...Isaiah just stood at the bottom and watched him), and Landon is layed back and relaxed.  Clearly, we had a great deal to be thankful for this year.  God has blessed us tremendously!  Here are some pictures from Mom's house:

Visiting after Thanksgiving Dinner

Mawmaw and her Boys

Chatting with Jude

Mawmaw and her Boys II

So Thankful for my Men!



With all my Sibs, Sibs-in-Laws, and Nephews.  Frankie made it in too!



The Leckliders

The Littrells

Watching Jude climb the Stairs

I had the day after Thanksgiving off, so we met my Dad in Dickson for lunch before heading back to Memphis. 

Notice Isaiah still cramming a roll for the picture



With Pawpaw


A final few notes on thanksgiving...  The past 6 months have probably been the most challenging in my life, and it's been really easy to focus on the negative.  And to be completely honest, as I write this I realize I didn't really have a spirit of thanksgiving on the day set apart for that purpose.  As difficult as the long hours apart from my family and various other challenges have been, I have so very much to thank God for... an amazingly supportive and loving husband; a healthy, happy, precious son; a crazy, large, wonderful family; a great group of supportive friends and church family; the opportunity to puruse what I desire; etc etc etc.  Above all those things, though, I'm most thankful for a God who sees me for what I really am and loves me just the same, giving His only Son to make me His own.  THANK YOU!

Who's Who?

Okay, so I know it's probably not that hard to figure out who is who, but I thought it'd be fun to compare our baby pictures at similar ages:

10 Months

The month of October has really flown by, and yet again, we're at another monthly milestone.  I don't have a lot of updates for Isaiah this month...he's mostly just perfecting the skills he already has.  Once he decided to crawl, he took off pretty quickly.  The ladies at daycare joke that they used to have no trouble keeping up with him because he'd pretty much sit in the same spot playing, but now they're always having to call his name as he's disappearing under tables, etc.  When we're out of his comfort zone (i.e. home or daycare), though, he's still quite reserved and tends to just sit and look around at everything.  Chris is claiming this trait as his own, and I tend to agree.

I'm letting Isaiah eat table food for most meals now.  He still eats the baby food well, and we often opt for that because it's healthier than the take-out we pick up on some of our busiest nights.  I'm not really sure if I could say what his favorite food is--he eats almost all food really well, and it's definitely showing in his cheeks and thighs these days.

Isaiah really enjoys when we read to him, and his favorite book is "Where's Spot?" that Aunt Deda gave him.  It's a pop-up book, and he absolutely LOVES to open the little pop-ups and see what's behind them.  He likes to help turn the pages too.  I'm hoping we can continue to cultivate his love for books.  A few weeks ago, we made the decision to unhook the TV at home.  We've literally only turned it on once in the past 3 weeks, and that was to watch part of a UT football game.  We don't have anything in particular against TV, but it was consuming too much of our rare free time in the evenings, and it took that drastic a step for us to reallocate our time.

We went to the Fall Festival at our church this past Friday, October 22nd.  It was so warm that I had to wait until after sunset to even attempt putting on Isaiah's full giraffe costume.  Even then, we didn't keep it on long.  He only took a one-hour nap at daycare that day, and he was so exhausted, that he fell asleep mid-bite of his applesauce during dinner at the festival.  We enjoyed visting with friends and seeing their kiddos all dressed up.  We look forward to many Halloweens to come and the accompanying festivities.



We've had to make a really difficult decision recently.  One night last week I was home alone with Isaiah while Chris was at a meeting.  While I was sitting on the floor with him, he quickly crawled toward Frankie and grabbed some of Frankie's fur on a paw (which are very sensitive).  Before I could get there to pry his hands loose, Frankie snapped at him pretty fiercely and knocked him over.  Thankfully there was no serious harm after the fear subsided, but it really scared me, and I honestly expected to see blood when I went to grab Isaiah.  Frankie has always been jealous of Isaiah, though he's never been ugly to Isaiah directly.  He usually either ignores him or licks him sweetly.  Now that Isaiah is mobile, though, we feel that this situation is likely to repeat itself, and we'd never forgive ourselves if Isaiah was injured because we were too attached to Frankie to let him go.  We also feel that Frankie would probably benefit from being in a home where he can have more focused attention--let's face it, Frankie is a needy dog.  When we adopted him, we signed a contract saying if we ever came to a point where we couldn't keep him, we'd have to give him back to the rescue group.  We've contacted the director and she's in the process of trying to find Frankie a good home.  We love Frankie and he's been a good, loyal companion, but we know that in the end, this is the best decision for our family.

Happy Birthday Chris!

Chris turned 29 on October 11th, and we celebrated with burgers at Huey's and Muddy's delicious cupcakes for dessert.  We've both been working a lot lately, so we didn't have as much time as I would have liked to devote to his celebration, but it was a nice night together as a family.  I don't express this enough, but I am so blessed by Chris' presence in my life.  People have often asked in the past if it was tough to be married during medical school, and my answer is that it would have been impossible had I NOT been married to Chris.  He sacrifices and serves without complaint in more ways than I can enumerate, and I'm so thankful to God for bringing us together!  This is the eighth year we've celebrated his birthday together, and I pray that there will be many, many more to come.

Isaiah benefited from Daddy's birthday too--he got to try a tiny bit of burger and ate a good bit of my bun AFTER eating all of his baby food. That boy is a bottomless pit!! He was not too happy with us when we were indulging in our cupcakes at home, so I had to break out the Cheerios to appease his appetite. This is the picture of him after I let him have the Cheerios:

In other updates, Isaiah demonstrated his ability to crawl about a week ago--just a few days before his cousin, who happens to be 2 months younger :)  Even though he can crawl pretty well, he doesn't do it very much.  Chris and I still try to entice him to crawl by placing toys several feet away, but it rarely works out how we plan.  He's not super adventurous, and he's easily contented with playing in one spot with a few toys.  Now that I know he can crawl, I've decided it's a good thing that I'm not constantly having to chase after him and worry what he's getting into.  I'm sure my day will come, but for now, he's pretty easy to keep tabs on.  Here are some pictures of him pulling up and crawling...

NINE MONTHS!!

Isaiah Perry Starnes is 9 months old!!  I'm not sure why, but the "quarter" milestones seem like a bigger deal than the rest (3, 6, 9, 12 months).  We are so enjoying this precious blessing from God.  It's hard to remember what life was like before he arrived.  This really is such a fun age, and I often wish I could just freeze time where he's at currently.  At the same time, I anxiously await each new milestone and change.

Here are some updates for our memory's sake:

- At his 9 month check-up, he weighed 21.8 lbs (75th%) and was 29 inches long (80th%).  At each check-up, he moves up to a higher percentile, so he seems to be making his own growth curve rather than following the typical.  He was not so happy with Dr. Pendergrass at this last visit, though Doc wasn't surprised since increasing stranger anxiety is normal at this stage.  Isaiah had his 3rd ear infection at this appointment (at least the timing worked out with an already scheduled visit), and I just hate seeing my baby suffer.  Thankfully, his pain seems to resolve pretty quickly once we start antibiotics.
- 3 teeth total now, but it looks like at least 2 are going to pop through any day.  His gums really seemed to be hurting tonight, so we might see something new in the next day or two.
- He's quite the little ham these days.  He claps when he's happy or proud of himself.  He loves to blow raspberries, especially after I've just put food in his mouth (hard not to laugh at these when I'm telling him "No").  He often uses his finger to flap his lips (hard to describe, but I think you know what I mean).  He's waved bye a few times, though we're still working on it.  He has a funny adult-sounding laugh that he'll do out of the blue sometimes, which makes us laugh, which makes him laugh.... 
- He's very mobile without being mobile.  Let me explain...he isn't crawling yet, but he can get to everything he wants one way or another it seems.  I will deliberately sit toys on the opposite side of the blanket from him to entice him to crawl.  He'll go from sitting to a position on one knee and both hands with one leg out to the side for leverage and then STREEEETCH to reach whatever he wants.  He can typically get anything within 3 feet of him.  Apparently, that's good enough for this boy (for now at least).
- He's occasionally attempting to pull to a stand.  He fell doing this at daycare a couple weeks ago and bumped his head--I'm afraid that's just the first of many.  He definitely has the strength in his legs to stand up, so it's just a matter of time (watch out world!).
- He graduated to a big boy carseat  (aka convertible) instead of the infant carrier.  We actually bought the convertible seat over a month ago, but we just really loved the convenience of the carrier and used it as long as possible.  He's now outgrown it in every dimension and we were forced to move on.  I'm not sure if Isaiah is too crazy about the change yet either--it may just be that he's not crazy about being strapped in period.  It's become quite a battle to buckle him in, and he seems to think it's a game most of the time.
-We moved the jumperoo up to the highest level a couple of weeks ago.  He's not as interested in it these days, either.  He'd rather be sitting on the floor playing with his toys most of the time, but it comes in handy for us when we need to get some things done and not worry about what he might get in to.  Our days are numbered, I'm afraid.
- Isaiah has been experiencing some separation anxiety for a couple of weeks now.  It's pretty mild, but if he's not really focused on his toys, he starts to fuss and cry when I walk out of the room at home.  He's also cried a little when we've dropped him off at the church nursery or daycare once or twice recently.

A few recent pictures:

Did you know we already started him in baseball training camp?  He's just recently started paying attention to the baseball on this toy.  For a while, he just wanted to chew on the bat.

"What's the big deal, Mom?  Haven't you ever seen a 9 month old hit a homer?"  Notice the shirt--we were cheering on our Vols against UAB that day.

Hammin' it up at the GrandStarnes' house.  I promise, we do dress him in clothes that aren't related to UT football!!

Meeting Hallie

We went to Hickory two weekends ago and stayed several days to meet Hallie for the first time and visit the Starnes clan.  This was Isaiah's first trip to Hickory and first time to meet several family members and friends of the fam.  He was under the weather for some of the visit and teething a good bit, but overall, he did really well.  Chris' old room has now become the grandbaby nursery complete with crib and changing table, which made things much easier on us.  Isaiah also enjoyed several toys Grandmom had ready for him--his favorite was the classic Fisher-Price ring-stacker.  He was so content just playing on the den floor with those colorful rings.  He teased us a lot with his movements from sitting to near-crawling so many times, but he didn't crawl more than one 'step'.  He did try pulling up a few times with success once or twice.  Needless to say, he had lots of cheerleaders.

We really enjoyed all of the quality time with everyone, and Isaiah had it made with so much attention.  I think Frankie enjoyed all of the extra laps and hands for petting too!  Hallie is a sweetie and we look forward to many more visits.  Here are several pictures from last week (some borrowed from Melissa's blog):

The whole fam after a grill-out with the Helms

It's SOOO hard to believe that nine short months ago Isaiah was smaller than Hallie is now!!

The Holcomb Family

Playing with Cousin Liz

Grandmom and Grandad with the kiddos

No Words Necessary