Griffin turned 11 months old yesterday on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve been meaning to do a ten-month retrospective, but now that he’s 11 months, what’s the point?

At 10 months, we had just been back from Cozumel for about a week. My mom stayed at the ouse and watched him for the week and Erin came over during the days to help out. The best thing about that time was that nobody who was here at night (my mom) had to worry about Griffin waking up at night and making enough noise to wake up Fawkes and Phoenix, as they were in another country.

Since there was no rush to soothe him, Griffin was able to get more acclimated to falling back asleep on his own. When we first got back from or trip, he slept through the night a few times. Then he woke up a few times. Then he started sleeping through the night one night and waking up the next. Literally every other day. There were a few really bad nights in all of that.

Reflexively, Tristen or I would get up to take care of him, but she pointed out that we had fallen back into getting him up and that we just needed to stop.

So we did.

And now he’s sleeping through the night very consistently. In fact, I can’t remember the last time he even woke up to cry in the middle of the night.

Now, if he would just sleep later, that would be great. Yesterday morning he made a little noise at around 5 and again around 5:30. Both times though, he was still again by the time I checked the monitor and didn’t get up for good until closer to 6.

Normally he gets up between 5:30 and 6, and when he gets up at that time it usually wakes Fawkes and Phoenix up, so there’s no point in trying to see if he’ll go back to sleep.

The other big thing happening since he turned 10 months is that he started to crawl. He had been dragging himself around on the floor pretty well for a while and had rocked a few times on all fours, but he never really crawled until right at 10 months. It might have been the day after, but he just started doing it. Now he can basically run-crawl.

More recently, in the past, oh, maybe about a week or so, is that he can stand on his own for a few seconds. He’ll even pull himself up on things (like me, for example) and then let go and stand there. At the rate he’s going I think he might walk earlier than the other kids. I mean, you never know with stuff like that, but he just wants to be involved in so much stuff that his older brothers do that I think it pushes him.

Speaking of interacting with his brothers, they still aren’t totally cool with him doing things. Sometimes you’ll catch one of the twins doing sweet things though. Phoenix has climbed into his chair at the table when Fin Fin is already in his seat and start feeding him now and then. Sometimes they’ll mess with him a little.

Mostly though, they just want him to stay away from whatever toy they’re playing with at the moment. Phoenix had to go sit in the corner two or three times yesterday for pushing him over.

He’s making more noises. “Mamamama” and “Dadadada,” but I don’t think he’s actually saying Mama and Dada. He does have more of an awareness to his actions though, and he likes to actually play. He reacts playfully when I chase after him and he’ll climb on me like he wants to play.

You have to be careful anytime he gets his face near you though; the kid likes to bite and those six teeth of his are savage. He puts them to use on food too though and will eat just about anything you set in front of him.

Except some eggs this afternoon. He ate them in the morning but was dumping them out of his plate today.

He’s overall a very sweet and smiling little thing though.

I’m not sure what’s going to be going on for his birthday. A lot is up in the air right now with the COVID-19 outbreak. Schools have been canceled, restaurants ordered shut except for carryout or delivery. We were originally going to be in Lake Norman for it, but I’m not sure if that’s still happening, if it should happen, or if it will even be able to happen.