Major is just as sweet as they come.
Truly a little angel boy.
He is calm, mellow, completely laid back.
Wow, we really needed one like that in this family. 😉
He was nearly 22 lbs at his 9 month appointment, putting him just 2 lbs behind his big sister.
This boy is a little tank.  He is rolly and squishy and ever so delishy.
He has 6 teeth, and is working on 7 & 8 as we speak.  Poor guy got all 6 in the matter of about 2 weeks!
He loves to grind his top with his bottom and it sends a shiver down my soul every single time.
He is happy and goofy and always on the go.
He army crawls faster than anything you’ve ever seen.  A couple months ago we were at a friend’s who had been in the army.  They were so impressed with his form and speed. ha!
He can now crawl with his belly off the ground, but when he’s being quick he’ll resort to the army crawl, or “the slither” as I have named it.
I always love this age so much, their little personalities really start to blossom at this age.
Maj has turned into a little goof ball.  He loves anything silly.
He plays peek-a-boo with anything he can.
He waves on demand, melting the hearts of all the women in his life (sisters).
He says mama, dada, stella, hi, bye, uh-oh, mmmm, yeah, boo, baba.
He has started to mimick anything we do, and will try to say words we tell him to.
He is the latest of my early talkers, but it just fits right along with his laid back demeanor.
He growls and woofs like a little puppy.  He reminds me of a puppy in so many ways, we often call him “Pup”.
The other day I came around the kitchen island and he was right there and right when he saw me, he said “raw!” Definitely learned that from his sisters. 😉
He loves the school bus and waving his sisters off and home from school.
Major definitely loves his mama in a special way, but he honestly is a fan of our whole crew.
He plays with Grae, and pesters her like the little brother he is.
He takes to Harlo just like his second mama, and Stella is his favorite source of entertainment.
One thing that has been so fun for me to see, is the brother-sister dynamic come to life.  I have no brothers, so this is a very first for me.
I always say that Major is the little house boyfriend, and it’s so true.  He has us ladies completely smitten.  He can do no wrong (yet).
I can tell he and Brady have their own little guy-bond and my heart just about bursts right in two when I see them together.
My boys.  My goodness I’m glad we have a son.
Major is officially done nursing, as of 9 months.
Of course, that milestone has been a little bittersweet.
I wanted to chat about it more for my record so..
Struggling with milk supply is the name of the game for me.  I fight back hard, and have been able to make nursing work, which has been so wonderful.  Major is such an eater – he eats WAY more than my girls did.  When we started feeding him baby food, I realized this especially.  He was nursing non stop all day, and never seeming satisfied.  His sleeping at night was getting worse and worse.  He was up every two hours to eat, for sure.  I was making myself crazy taking supplements, counting calories (making sure I was getting enough), drinking water by the gallon and living on no sleep, I felt like my milk battle was winning me, not me winning it.
I also can’t pump after the first bit, because my milk wont let down with a pump.  This is all stuff I dealt with with my others too, but I still just pressed on.  Then when Major was about 7 months, I had a photo shoot take me away for longer than 2 hours, and as a desperate attempt, I had Brady go pick up a small can of formula at the store and see if he’d take it.  He gulped down a 6 ounce bottle then took a 3.5 hour nap.
And not that this was THE answer, and not that I couldn’t have still pushed on with nursing exclusively.. but I felt my heart change – how prayers are often answered for me.  I had been drowning and I couldn’t think of anything I could move from my plate to stay afloat, and on that day, I saw something that I could move off my plate.  I could have kept fighting, but I didn’t have to.  And it’s a lesson I hadn’t learned yet in mothering, and I’m grateful for.  We didn’t rush into anything, I kept nursing – and on days I felt nursing wasn’t enough, I’d feed him a bottle.  Then I started feeding him a bottle before bed, and that made all the difference in his sleeping.  We gradually, very slowly moved from nursing to bottles full time.  And instead of feeling terribly sad, or like defeat, I felt happier, and I could tell Major was happier.  I felt like I had done what was right for us, not what was right for me, or what I wanted to do the most, but what was right for us.  And that felt so good.
Major is happily taking 2-3 8 oz. bottles a day, sleeping through the night, and finally napping reguarly too.  It has also been such a sweet tender mercy to me because my oldest baby was a bottle-baby as well, and it’s brought back so many sweet memories from her babyhood.  It’s another testiment to there being a million ways to be a good mother, and no one way.  As a mama of four babies now, I haven’t found two that are exactly alike.  I have had to be four different mothers to my four different children.  And somehow, I am doing it, by the Grace (and loads of help) of God.
And that is the story of how Major went from a nursing baby, to a bottle-fed baby.  The end.
Major is truly the easiest.  We have schlepped that baby around on road trips, various adventures, camping, hotels, pack-n-plays in different places.  He sometimes has to take a carpool ride rather than take a nap, or not get to bed as early as he’d like because we’re still not through with dinner.  He is so go with the flow, and I am forever forever grateful he’s in our family.
Our happy little caboose.  What a dream.
He has shown me a whole new flavor of love.
I feel like the luckiest to get to be his mama.