Nathaniel is 11 months old!

Nathaniel has two big things to share this month: he's getting his first tooth, and he's finally sleeping through the night!  He got the tooth about three weeks ago, at 10.5 month; it's the bottom left one.  He started sleeping through the night about the same time, although he wakes up sometimes at 5am and decides that it's time to be up for the day.  That's a little early for me!  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to sleep through the night very often, because Megan got sick right after that, and was up coughing at night for about a week.

One of Nate's favorite toys is this big soft ball that he got from Great Grandpa Jim last Christmas.  It plays music when it is bounced on the floor and it has a big tag that Nate can use to pick it up and carry it across the room while he's crawling.  He loves to roll the ball back and forth with someone, although he usually bats it way off to the side.  I love the expression on his face as he crawls after the ball so determinedly.  He came up with a new game where he would bring the ball to Megan at the quarantine wall, Megan would throw it away from him, and then he would go chase after it.  Megan told me that it was just like playing fetch with a dog.  :)

Nathaniel also loves to play with block towers.  He gets very excited about knocking towers over, so much so that he will often knock the tower over as soon as I start building it.  If I want to get a tall tower built, I have to enlist Megan's help to hold him back so he can't destroy it until I'm done.  Nathaniel is not a fan of that!

Just recently he has also started trying to stack the blocks himself, although he can't actually do it without knocking the whole tower over.

He still likes to ride on his little musical car, but he is also interested in turning the car over and playing with the wheels.  When Natalie and Rosemary were here last weekend, they had fun giving each other rides on the car.  Nate could push it across the room if Rosemary was sitting on it, and I think Nate got to ride while Natalie pushed him.

He was not very happy when we put the quarantine wall up in our living room, but he did like standing up on the wall and trying to chew on it.  I really liked having the wall in the middle of the living room, because it prevented Nate from being able to reach the computers, the remotes and all Ben's stuff.  His side of the room was completely child-proofed.

Nathaniel is crawling around really fast now, and he is starting to try to climb on and over things, including Ben.  Ben was trying to block Nate from getting to the chair, so Nate decided to go through Ben's legs.

I've put the fridge magnets back up; my fridge has been so nice and clutter-free for the last two years!  Right now, Nate pretty much likes to just pull the magnets off the fridge, but he does enjoy it when the girls set the gears up in a chain or make the animals make noise.  As much as I dislike the magnets, it helps keep him from trying to get into the cabinet under the sink to eat the soap.  I put him there the other day while I was getting his bath ready.

What else does Nathaniel really like to do?  Well, he especially loves to try to drive the car!  Sometimes I let him stand in the driver's seat while we are waiting to pick someone up.  He tries to chew on the steering wheel occasionally, but mostly he just likes to hold on and bounce up and down.  Thankfully he won't be learning to drive any time soon!

Another thing Nathaniel enjoys is bath time in the kitchen sink.  He likes to splash in the water and make a big mess, and he especially likes it when Megan helps out.  Sometime soon I will try giving him a bath in the bathtub with the big girls, but this is so much easier on my back.

Nate is not a big fan of wearing his sisters' sunglasses, but he looks awfully cute in them!

Nathaniel also loves to play with Megan's friends and the girls in the neighborhood; he doesn't seem to have stranger anxiety around other kids.  The older neighbor girls are fascinated by babies, and love to pick him up, carry him around, and help him play with toys.  Megan's friends fight over who is going to push him on the swing, so sometimes he gets pushed by all of them at once..  These photos kind of reminded me of David's harem. 

I'm afraid he's turning into a picky eater, he doesn't seem to want to eat anything new lately.  He still likes any kind of fruit, peas, carrots, bread, crackers, and white string cheese, but he will no longer eat ham, orange cheese or green beans, all of which he used to enjoy.  So he doesn't seem to get a lot of variety in his diet right now.  He has also not been very interested in drinking whole milk from a sippy, but we'll keep working on that this month.