Caden is 11 Months Old!

Yesterday Caden turned 11 months old.  I still cannot believe how fast time is flying.  Everyday he is growing and learning more and more.  Here are some updates from this past month.

- Caden can walk!  Well, he takes 4-5 steps at a time by himself.  I know he could take more but he's very deliberate about his actions.  He doesn't like falling and when he was learning to crawl he made sure he had it down before going full force.  Same when he first started sitting up by himself.  It's only a matter of time before he's off walking and running on his own.  When he's walking better I'll let you know.  His favorite way to walk is holding our hands.  So precious!

- Caden still loves books. We read to him everyday for at least an hour sometimes two. He likes turning the pages and looking at the words and pictures.

- He knows a lot of words. We are pretty sure he knows the words for bird, ball, no, yes, mama (finally, but he doesn't say it that often), dadda, daddy, mommy, "go get ___", "where is ___?", granddad, stand-up, drink, water, book, read, and bed. He is getting really good at pointing at things, getting things, and doing actions that would make us thing the knows these words.

- He can say: hi, hey, dadda, baba, mama, ta, tey, ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, f, g, ba, and ah. He also has the best laughs.

- He loves singing, especially in the car.

- He participates in our conversations. The other night while we were eating dinner Collin and I started laughing about something and Caden joined in laughing.

- Caden loves to pick out his clothes for the day and food to eat.

- We have been giving him more foods that we eat. Some of his new favorite foods are: whole wheat bagels, whole wheat pancakes, whole wheat waffles (we just got a 220 waffle iron), any kind of whole wheat or whole grain bread, cheerios, cheese, apples, mangoes, green peas, carrots, mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower, deli meat, blueberries, strawberries, spinach, sweet potatoes, ground beef, squash, yogurt, chicken, and peaches. I recently made a baby friendly shepherd's pie and he loved it! It had onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, and lean ground beef. Collin liked it too even though it was pureed.

The baby friendly Shepherd's Pie

- Caden sleeps 11-12 hours at night and usually take one nap a day for 45 min to 2 hours.

- I nurse him four times a day, he eats three meals a day, and has one snack.

- He wears size 12 month clothes.

- We recently switched to cloth diapers and they seem to be working really well. We still use disposables when we go out sometimes.

- We have bought him a few pairs of shoes.  He's able to walk pretty well in shoes although he prefers holding onto one of our hands when we walk with him.

- Caden really likes animals, especially dogs. We don't have a dog but several of our friends do and there are a lot of dogs in Germany. We are really sad that my parents' dog, Fritz, passed away last week. Caden would have loved playing with him.

- Caden has now had 4 haircuts!  Two by Mom and Dad and two by a barber.

Yesterday before his haircut

The cutest sad face ever!  He did not like getting his haircut by the mean barber.

Now he's happy.  In the car with his monkey.

Last night we went to dinner in downtown Heidelberg. We hadn't been down there in a while. Caden was so excited to see a fountain that we let him "play" in it.

Collin and I love Caden so much and are so glad God chose us to be his parents.  He is such a sweet, cute, and wonderful boy.