11 Months

We are starting to plan the one year birthday parties.  It is hard to believe that the next post will be one year.  The time has flown by.  Elijah will be having a party in Midland for the family and one in Kalamazoo for all our friends that live here.  He is a lucky boy that gets to eat cake twice.  He will probably enjoy a little ice cream too.  He has had some on Mother's Day and Father's Day when we decided to treat ourselves.  He makes a face at first like "why is this so cold?" then he realizes it is yummy and wants more.  He is also eating pancakes and some other misc. foods that we give him.

Elijah is still not truly crawling.  He gets up on his hands and knees to sit himself back up and gets around by pulling himself on his belly.  I guess that is the benefit of hardwood floors, he doesn't have to work very hard to get around.  He isn't pulling himself into a standing position, but if he is sitting and we grab his hands he is helping us pull him into a standing position.

Elijah is responding to and recognizing certain words like "no" and "clap".  He will also start clapping when we sing patty cake.  He has a baby einstein book that I point to items in and tell him what they are so now when we look at that book he points at the items.  His favorite words to speak are "Abby" and "baby".  I don't know if he knows that I am Abby but I try not to respond to him when he uses my name because I don't want him growing up calling me Abby.

Elijah's helmet will be hopefully coming off soon.  When he started wearing it he had a 14mm difference from one side of his head to the other.  Now he has a 6mm difference and his whole head has grown 1 1/2 cm.  He improved a mm in one week due to a growth spurt.  He has another appointment July 13th and we are hoping that is his last one.  I think he is over his growth spurt so I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will still see an improvement.  His helmet only has a 2cm growth allowance so Elijah has almost grown out of his helmet.  If he gets down to 2 or 3mm difference we will just call it good because that much of a difference will hardly be noticeable.