10 Months

You see that little face? Does it melt your heart into a big blob of jello?? What? That's just me?

I have no doubt about why God chose to make this little guy the baby of the family... and he is already milking it, let me tell you. Pretty sure Mama and big sisters will be waiting on this baby boy until he's 16. Or maybe later, I make no promises.

Ty had his 10 month checkup today, and it was a bit puzzling. First, he only weighed 18lbs 16oz on the baby scale. When I weighed him last month at home he was over 19 lbs. At first the nurse thought it was because he was kicking his legs around, but we weighed him again with the same result. The doctor said it's normal for kids to take a dip around this age since they're more active but the kid eats like a champ (he downed half my plate of broccoli chicken divan the other day... pretty sure there's nothing that this kid won't eat!) and has been mobile for a while. It also drops him from 50th percentile to 10th... which seems a little crazy. I mean, he is kinda little, but not THAT little.

The other puzzling part of the appointment was the doctor's reaction to Ty not walking or crawling on his knees yet. I have never really considered Dr. Miller necessarily proactive - every time I've had a concern about one of the kids or had questions about whether they were hitting their milestones, he has kinda shrugged them off. But when he started asking questions about what Ty could and couldn't do, and I told him that he was crawling around on his belly and not pulling to stand, he mentioned that he could set us an appointment with a physical therapist.

Seriously?? He's only 10 months old! I mean, the girls definitely started crawling and walking MUCH earlier than this, and maybe it's because he is my third and last baby, but I haven't been even slightly concerned. It's not like he isn't mobile - he definitely doesn't have issues getting around and I figure he'll get around to walking when he's ready.

The only thing I can reason is maybe since his hemoglobin test came back as borderline anemic, the Dr. was concerned that the low iron levels are preventing him from developing enough strength in his legs. Either way, Tyler decided he might as well prove him wrong... he started pulling up to stand the same day! I honestly don't think we are far off from this boy being on the run and I'm not about to push him before he's ready. I plan on keeping him a baby as long as he will let me. :-)