10 Months

Grayson is ten months old!  Our little man had a lot of big developments this last month!  He is now crawling everywhere, he pulls himself up on anything he can, and he is starting to stand.  He is keeping me very busy!  Our family life has been pretty busy too as J had a hiring conference in North Carolina that he went to followed by follow up interviews that he has been travelling for.  He already has one very good offer and now we are just waiting to see what happens with a few other companies before we decide what is best for our family.  G and I were also able to spend time with my best friend Jessie who came to visit and  then our whole family did a very quick trip to Arizona to celebrate my father in law's 60th birthday.

We started out G's 10th month with some much needed family time after J had been gone for a few weeks.  G was SO happy to have his daddy back! We took some walks on the beach and to the park and then spent a lot of time trying to get J prepped for his marathon of interviews.  At the start of April we dropped J off at the airport and wished him luck!  He ended up doing twelve interviews in two days!

The day after J left, my best friend from Phoenix flew in to keep G and me company while J was gone.  It was so much fun to see her and to have her spend a lot of time with G because we had only had a few hours here and there since he was born.  We had lots of fun catching up, eating delicious unhealthy food and taking some pictures of G.  Jessie is a very good photographer so it was fun to have her take some pictures of G and me.  I wish that J would have been here too so that we could have gotten some good family pictures on the beach!  We were so grateful that she came to visit and it made the stress of waiting to hear how things were going for J in North Carolina a lot easier to handle.  We hope to see her again soon!

J returned having several companies that wanted to do follow up interviews with him so that was comforting.  We are so grateful to already have a job offer on the table so that has taken away a huge amount of stress.  It is very comforting not to have to stress about what will happen next.  In the military you have to apply for the end of your service well in advance so you can't really have a job lined up when you get out so there is a lot of uncertainty for families that are transitioning out.  As much as we would love to be able to move close to family, we are going to move to wherever the best job is for J.  We are very grateful to Cameron Brooks (the head hunter that J used that only works with military officers transitioning to civilian careers) for making this transition much less stressful than it would have been on our own!
Between the job conference and follow up interviews we took a very quick trip to Phoenix to celebrate my father- in-law's 60th birthday.  We were happy to have G spend some time with J's side of the family!  We spent the whole time with family and didn't even tell friends that we were in town.  We were able to get G in the pool for the first time since Scottsdale was ninety-five degrees.  He absolutely loved it!  He was such a happy little guy in the water.  His grandma got him a little raft thing so that he could float around and he was thrilled with it!  We enjoyed a nice party that honored Jim and then as quickly as we came we had to head home.  We hope to see everyone again soon!

At 10 months Grayson:
- weighs 21 lbs.  He is a chunk! I get an arm workout carting him around!
- is around 30 inches long but he is far too wiggly for me to get an accurate measurement at this point!
-wears 6-12 month clothes.
-crawls all over the place and is in to everything!  Something clicked for him while Jessie was visiting and he started crawling to everything.  Last month he would occasionally crawl across a room but then not do it again for several days.  Now he is totally unstoppable!  It has definitely made my life more chaotic but he is very happy with his new independence!
- pulls himself up on every piece of furniture he can find.  He will crawl straight across a room to get to something he can pull himself up on.  He always looks so proud when he gets up so it's really cute!  He does sometimes forget to hold himself and then he falls and gets mad.
- tries to stand up and can do so for about 5 seconds before he falls over.
- no longer likes the jumperoo now that he can crawl and stand.
- loves to eat pretty much anything that is put in front of him!  He eats small pieces of chicken, turkey, cheese, fruit, some vegetables, eggs, and most anything else someone puts in front of him.  I am so grateful not to have a picky eater!
-usually sleeps well but he has had some rough nights this month.  I'm hoping we can get back to 12 hours every night consistently soon.
-loves to pull all of the dvd's out of the dvd bin, dump all of the toys out of his toy box, and enjoys playing with balls.
-is a very laid back baby!  He is such a sweet little guy who is hardly ever in a bad mood!  Usually if he is crying it is only because he is tired or hungry and once the problem is solved he goes back to being sweet.  We are so blessed by this little man on a daily basis!