10 Months and.... Hating It

Ethan turned 10 months on Monday! I was so excited, 10 months is when both boys started walking and Caroline walked at 11 months, so Ethan should be pretty dang close! That's exciting! But then I realized that although the prospect of walking is cool, spending the day with my 10-month old is mostly what I classify as "NOT AWESOME." Here's why:

-He crawls 100 miles an hour, which is fun to watch, but he mostly crawls toward me. He crawls to me to be picked up.
-If I pick him up, he bites me shoulder, which really hurts! Then he pulls my hair HARD, which really REALLY hurts! So I tap his head and say "no" for biting, and smack his hand and say "no" for hair-pulling, then put him back down.
-As soon as I put him down he crawls toward me at 100 miles an hour. Since I won't pick up a kid just so they can abuse me, I ignore him down there on the floor. He then pulls himself up on my legs and bites the back of my thighs. What the CRAP?!
-To avoid bitten thighs I use evasive maneuvers - as soon as he's close to me, I immediately step over him and walk the other direction and find something to do in that quadrant. He follows at 100 mph. Evading is pretty easy to do, but Ethan gets tired of it quickly.
-When he gets tired of something, he SCREAMS. Not crying, yelling, or fussing, he has an ear-piercing scream that grates the nerves and destroys the soul. I HATE IT.

-Instead of picking up Ethan only to get mauled, or sidestepping over him so he can't chew on my leg flesh, I often try confinement to his high chair. Perfect! He needs to eat and I need to stop getting eaten. He's been eating solids for nearly half his life so he thinks he's a Big Baby and can use the spoon himself, so I am only able to spoon-feed him about 2 bites before he gets feisty and grabs the spoon, or turns his head, or clamps his mouth and refuses more, or WORSE - opens his mouth, takes a big bites, and blows a raspberry right back at me.
-Forget spoon feeding, let's try small solid chunks he can manipulate himself. Cheerios, graham crackers, fruit chunks, green beans or corn kernels... All of it ends up on the floor. He's a food thrower and (you guessed it) I HATE IT.
-No food, no problem, at least the high chair contains him so he can't follow me and drive me nuts. But then he starts in on the SCREAMING. Back down.
-He can't be up, he can't be down, he can't be fed, but he can't be left in his high chair, and now I've spent most of the morning wearing him out with evasive maneuvers, so it's probably naptime. He's only 10 months so even though he didn't eat it's still possible for him to survive solely on formula (I stopped nursing at 8 months - non-stop biting did not only apply to me shoulder and my legs) so I make him a nice warm bottle. Won't take it cold, of course, that would be too simple. So Ethan, the bottle, and I sit down for a nice snuggle so he's drink the whole thing and it's like wrestling a squid. Sure, he's drinking most of it, but a good portion is getting drooled back onto me, he arches his back so he can look at the world upside-down, he pushes off my legs so I have to engage my biceps into a wrestling hold so he doesn't completely fall out of my arms onto his upside-down head... it is anything BUT relaxing.
-You don't want any snuggles, you don't get any snuggles! So I drop off Ethan into his crib with what's left of his bottle and suddenly he's SO SAD that I'm not holding and snuggling him! Well, FOOL, you lost your chance.
-Take a nap, wake up, and DO IT ALL AGAIN.

I'm going out on a limb to declare that 10 months old is NOT on the list of my favorite things.