Ensley Adventures: Daniel is 10 Months and Us Lately

How time has flown by. In May we hit our one year mark of living in Texas. We visited David's family for his youngest brother's wedding. Then David wrapped up his first year of residency and we headed out for a family vacation in California. I may post a recap on that later.

It has been a wonderful year of many transitions and exciting changes. We love living here in Texas close to my family and will be sad to leave in another year from now. We are all (and David most of all) ready for David to finally be done with his residency and schooling. By the time he completes residency next year, including college, dental school, general dentistry residency and now orthodontics he has been in higher education for the past 11 years! To our friends in medicine, I know that is just a drop in the bucket compared to the decades you spend preparing for your profession.

In baby news, Daniel is a busy boy and keeps me on my toes constantly. If he's not pulling skillets off the counter onto his head, he's cleaning the toilet bowl for me or getting some extra calories in via puppy chow. I have never seen such a happy, go lucky baby. He never cries unless he is out of food on his tray or he's just woken up and wants someone to come get him. He doesn't need entertainment, just supervision to ensure his safety (from himself mostly) and to keep him from destroying whatever Laura's playing with.

He appears to be over whatever dairy intolerance that plagued us for the first six months of his life and I am loving having dairy again. He is still small at less that 17 pounds at his 9 month visit and barely hanging onto the 5th percentile but he's meeting and surpassing all his developmental milestones. Thankfully, our pediatrician wasn't concerned about his small statue which put my mom guilt on the back burner until next week. The boy eats like his daddy and I find myself feeding (and cleaning) him five times a day plus nursing five or six time as well. He is finally filling out a bit too.

Laura is learning to play with him, but he is still somewhat of a nuisance to her as he is mostly destructive. I joke with my sister in law that Daniel has been taking secret lessons on mischieviousness and peril from her youngest boy. Trouble with a capital T that boy. He even ended our evening last night with a lovely surprise in the bathtub. Maybe boys just really are gross?

He loves pushing the walker around and Laura's metal shopping cart. He has even taken a few tiny steps so I wouldn't be surprised to see him walking in the next few weeks.

Also as a random side note, we have the creepiest ice cream truck that trolls around our neighborhood that makes me laugh and it just drove past our house as I'm typing. It plays a little tune and then says "Hello?" in the weird mechanical voice. Am I a bad mom if I tell my children "that's a truck that plays music" and leave the ice cream part out of the explanation? It will be half a decade before they're any wiser!