Hi everyone,
My DD (born Feb 8) started walking on Jan 1 (10months, 3 weeks), it was truly a great New Year's Day. She started crawling at 7 months. She's a beast, quite rough and tumble, she takes tons of tumbles on the floor and gets right up and keeps going, we wrestle and roll together on the floor. She climbs stairs, can slide feet-first off the side of the couch and bed on her own. I keep all the doors closed and have extended a hexagon baby playpens to make a really long baby gate to close off certain sitting areas in the house. She gets tons of floor play time and plays very well independently. She goes in every cabinet and drawer and wants to pull everything out. She has a dedicated picnic basket of plastic bowls, spoons, and various kitchen tools that she plays with while I prepare meals in the kitchen. She even goes into her clothing hamper and pulls out the clothes, tips it over to the side, and then crawls inside. She's also become best friends with our terrier-mix mutt. DD can give kisses, so she opens her mouth to kiss the dog, who then leans in to lick her mouth, it's very cute to see them sharing affection but equally gross at the same time. She also climbs into the dogs' bed and lays down with them. She also dances and claps when she hears a good beat. We did a sample Music Together class when we were last in the US and she loved it, once we return to the US (we live in Luanda. Angola) I'm going to enroll us in a class. She loves music. When my husband plays his recorder for her she is just mesmerized by the sound. I bought her a baby music set, she loves the egg shakers, tambourine, and banging on the drum top (bought it at Target). Last week she started showing a genuine interest in books, she goes over to her book shelf and pulls off board books and she'll actually sit in my lap and turn the pages as I read to her. Also, she addicted to pushing buttons, the stereo, the TV, my iPhone, the iPad, the dishwasher, if she sees a button, she's going to press it repeatedly and rapidly. She waves hello and good-bye, and calls mama and dada, not all discriminately, and has tons of other babble and gurgle syllable combinations. She's quite the talker. It's all so dynamic to see her transitioning into toddlerhood, but I totally miss my baby being a baby.
She's pretty petite as well. She can still wear some 6-9 month clothes, and she has plenty growing room in 9-12 month gear. She's wearing Robeez mocassins around the house for a bit of grip, our house has all tile floors. She was weighed yesterday (11 months, 2 days), she's 15.9 lbs. We're working on signing, she can sign "milk" very well (of course), she's never had a bottle, only has formula with cereal. She loves her sippy cups filled with water. She really likes it when I put a few ice cubes in the sippy cup. At about 7 months I was a bit worried that she was so tiny, but my pediatrician says not to worry, she's hitting all the developmental milestones appropriately. There are lots of petite women on both sides of the family.
She's a pretty good eater. She was really into the purees, not so much now. She definitely preferred the fruit blends over the veggie blends. I either made her food from local produce (fresh and frozen), or gave her Ella's Kitchen or Plum Organic food pouches. She can now suck the fruit purees out of the straw at the top of the pouches. But now she only wants to eat what I'm eating and feed herself. She likes grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, pancakes, string cheese, oatmeal, cheerios, maria biscuit cookies, yogurt melts, toast with cream cheese and mum-mum rice snacks. I'm trying to introduce more meat protein but she's not the excited about it. She seemed to have enjoyed some ground beef I made for her the other afternoon. She also likes chicken wings. She'll graze on cheerios all day long. She's BFing about 4-6 times a day too, more often if we're at home playing for the day, lots of comfort snacking during the day. If we're out at the markets or visiting friends she's too excited and stimulated to want to nurse. She goes to bed at 6:30pm (dinner at 4:30, bath at 5:45) and is up at 5:30am, wakes once at about 1-2am for a full both boobies feeding (about 15-20 minutes) then right back to sleep. She won't nap on her own in the crib anymore, hasn't do that since October. We took several long trips to the US and to Europe this fall which I think totally changed her daytime sleep habits. She's actually having her morning nap on my chest right now in the ErgoBaby. She's napping only in the Ergo, or in motion (car or stroller).
Ok, I've gone on and on over here, I'm a super excited proud first time momma. We're thinking about trying for baby #2 later this spring/summer. And we're moving back to the US in 8 weeks, super super super excited to get back to have parks and rec at our disposal and family members to visit with at any time. Thanks for letting me word purge about my bebe.