11 months!

Talia celebrated 11 months a couple days ago.  I can't believe she is almost a year old!!!!! Every day is an adventure, she is learning all kinds of new things, communicating more and more, and just developing into such an awesome little person!

Talia one month ago!

Yesterday!

What's new in her world?  

*She says "mama"!!!! Officially her first real word, and it just melts my heart!!!  She definitely seems to have a few other words in there, like banana (nana) and all done (ah dah) but nothing as clear or consistent as "mama".

*blows kisses, claps, dances, waves bye bye, gives hugs when asked (and not, girl loves hugging!) signs all done and airplane, and sometimes up.  Still not doing more or nurse. 

*expert peek-a-boo player, and getting pat-a-cake down. Also seems to be figuring out Itsy Bitsy Spider.

*Loves music, and dances to some songs that stir her heart!  It's so cute!!!

*crawling on hands and knees a lot more!  This has just been in the last week or so. She always does it when on grass, and sometimes on carpet, but on slick floors she likes to speed on her belly!

*pulls up to standing on everything!  She is very steady, but hasn't really started doing it without holding onto an edge.

*cruises around furniture! Yay! 

*LOVES her stuffed animals, especially bears!  So much so that when she sees bears in books, she tries to hug and kiss them!!!

*seems to be enjoying daycare!  Kevin has been having an easier time with drop off and pick up! She likes her teachers and has a couple little buddies!

*has become a picky eater.  Boo.  She still loves all cheese products and fruit. Refuses meats, and most veggies.  Is okay with bread, but not pasta or potatoes.  Hmmmm.  Was hoping we wouldn't deal with this until she was a bit older, but oh well!

*loves babies and big kids, but is not really into babies her own age, and is still pretty shy around adults most of the time.

*stacks things, and enjoys taking things out and putting them back, over and over!

*discovered picking her nose. :/

*has gotten sick a lot.  She has had fevers and colds, roseola, and possibly croup this week, though it didn't seem too bad so may have just been a weird sounding cough.  Darn daycare.  Made it 9 months with nary a sniffle, and she's now been sick every week since starting school!

*napping slightly better at school, but still not great.  Napping poorly at home, too.  

*went about 1.5 months without sleeping through the night, and being extremely difficult to get to sleep! However, the last couple days have been great! She's been going through a lot of development, so we weren't surprised that her sleeping was bad!  Hoping we will get a few weeks of good sleep in again.

*nursing is, well, I don't really know anymore.  I'm not pumping as much at work, so that is disconcerting.  She sometimes likes to nurse for long periods, and other times can't be bothered.  She had her first nurse strike this week, just would not eat. It was hard, and makes me think the end is near for us.  I have mixed feelings about it.  My goal was always to make it a year, and we are definitely going to make that.  After that, we are thinking we will just let her have cows milk at school instead of expressed breastmilk.  But I plan to continue nursing whenever we are home together for as long as she wants, but I am guessing that won't be too terribly long.  I'm proud of how hard she and I worked this year, and am going to be sad to let go of it, but also really looking forward to some flexibility!

*has 6 teeth! 2 middles on bottom and 4 front teeth on top.  She hasn't been bothered too badly by the last few teeth, so that's good! But I'm glad to have a little reprieve, doesn't look like there are any poking through in the immediate future!

*not sure what she weighs these days. She feels heavier.  She's wearing 12-18!month clothes and fills them out.  Her legs are loooooooong! She high waters some of her 18 month pants already!  We should get her weight when we go in for a doctor appointment next week.  Hoping it's around 19 pounds.  She's growing though!

*loves reading, playing with blocks, going for long walks and hikes, has a blast splashing in the tub, and is generally a pretty easy going awesome little squirt!  

We've had a few adventures this month! We took her to another Sounders game, and this time she stayed awake for the whole match! Yikes!  We've taken her on a couple great hikes, and she has been super!  Kevin also had to go to Montana for work, so he spent his first nights away from her, and she and I had an adventure on Bainbridge bouncing between grandparents' houses!  We took her to Folklife, so she got to see her first concerts! She's game for pretty much anything, as long as it's before 7pm, when she turns into a gremlin! ;)

10 months!

Today my baby is 10 months old!  Time is flying, and part of me wants to just MAKE IT STOP, and the other part of me is loving watching this little person grow and develop and become her big self!  And my how she is growing!

Talia is still army crawling, though she is starting to get up on all fours more and more often.  She just hasn't made a move from that position forward yet.  But she is a master army crawler, and gets herself around very quickly!

Talia one month ago!

Talia yesterday!

She is getting rug burns on her arm from pulling herself along! She has been figuring out how to get from her tummy to her bottom, which is exciting!  She's starting to pull up on things; boxes, tables, legs, etc.  She has great arm strength, but usually forgets to get her little legs involved! It's a lot to coordinate! :)

It's so exciting to see her mobility expanding, and we suppose some baby-proofing ought to happen now that she's pulling up on things and opening cabinets!  Ha!

She's understanding more and more of what we say, and responding!  She only signs "all done" consistently, but she understands "more", "nurse", "water" and "night night" and adorably does "how big is Talia" and waved and claps mostly on command.  We are working on pat-a-cake.  I'm trying to be more diligent in my use of signs, and slowly adding in more of them as she masters them.  So fun!!!

Eating continues to be one of her favorite parts of the day.  She gets three meals plus one snack, and is still nursing (or bottle feeding at daycare) 5-6 times a day.  Our usual routine is wake up around 6:15, nurse, breakfast at 8, nurse at 11, lunch at noon, nurse at 1, snack at 2, nurse at 4, dinner at 5:30, and nurse at 7pm.  Sometimes I sneak an extra nursing in the morning, and the last couple weeks she has been waking up at least once if not several times at night, and I nurse her sometimes for those if she has a hard time settling back down.  She's taking the bottle well at daycare, and I'm mostly keeping up with her, though I usually have to pump before bed to get a good amount to send to school.  I was sick her second week and that hurt my supply, but it's coming back up now.  

She's great at trying new foods!  This week she had cod, and she just inhaled it!!!  She couldn't shove it in her mouth fast enough!  I'm getting bored of most of the purees I've made, and I think she is, too, so we are trying to make more food that she can just enjoy a portion of our dinner each night.  She still needs food cut up small, especially because she likes to shove as much in as possible, so that has been a little bit of a limiting factor, but she is getting better every day!  We've been working on spoon skills, letting her out a preloaded spoon in her mouth is a piece of cake, and we've been letting her try to scoop food occasionally on her own. The other day she placed some Cheerios on the spoon with her fingers and then ate off the spoon!  That was cool!  I'm not sure how much she weighs, but the way she eats, I try not to dwell on it anymore.  Plus, we are a mere 2 months from my year goal of breastfeeding!!!!  Home stretch baby!!!  After that, we will be introducing some cows milk, but I will continue to nurse her when she likes.  I'm not sure how much I will keep pumping during the work day, but we will cross that bridge when we get there!

Sleeping has been a little tougher the last few weeks.  She is hit or miss with naps at daycare, and is back to only 30 minute naps at home most of the time.  I usually will hold her after she wakes up so she gets a good amount in for one nap each day, but it's frustrating that we've taken a step back on that front!  The daycare has been amazing working with her to try to get naps in.  They have moved her to a cot because they were finding they couldn't lay her in the crib without waking her, so now they rock her and then someone snuggles her as she lays on the cot until she falls asleep.  Most of the time she only naps once for half an hour, but she has had a few better days!

Night time sleep is funky, too.  We had to lower her crib a couple weeks ago when she started scaling, and as a short person that has been hard for me!  It's a looooong reach into that crib!!!! She's also working on 3 upper teeth, and obviously making major developmental changes, plus being away from me three days a week, has all added up to her not sleeping as well.  We are working through it, and since I'm working again, I've had to rely on Kevin a bit more often than I used to helping in the middle of the night.  I actually think it's good to have him do it more because he can't just feed her back to sleep, and let's be honest, I'm going to use that whenever possible to get her back to sleep as quickly as possible!  Lazy, tired mama! ;). This too shall pass, last night she only woke once at 4:30, so I think things will improve more over the next few days!

Daycare is going well, mostly!  I miss her so so much when she's gone, but she's adjusting well, liking her teachers, and drop off is going better for Kevin each time.  She's playing well, and eating tons!  We've only had one illness so far, and pretty sure that actually wasn't from daycare.  She did have a fever yesterday, but it was gone by the time she was home.  Hoping she has our good immune systems!!!

Once again, this feels disjointed since I wrote it over a few days!  The girl is happy, healthy, and the best thing ever!

9 months!

Talia is 9 months old, and boy are things changing in her (and our!) world!  

Talia one month ago!

Talia yesterday!

Firstly, she sprouted a new tooth yesterday!  She's now the proud owner of two tiny pearly whites, but I have yet to capture them on camera.  She hadn't bitten me while breastfeeding until last night.  Oh man did it ever hurt!!! Hopefully she won't do it again.  :/

She is army crawling to her little heart's content!  She started last week, and each day she gets faster and better at it! Today she started getting her little butt in the air more, so I think she will do a more traditional crawl soon.  I have videos, but can't post from my phone, so I will have to do a separate post of that!  

 

Crawling has improved her frustration levels SO much!!! She's a totally different baby most of the time, just happy to roam around, and knows if she needs or wants me, she can just scooch on over!  It's also a lot of work, so she has been napping like a little champ! Most days this week I've gotten at least one, if not two good naps every day!  It's been amazing!  

(She's not sleeping here, just having one of those mornings!) 

She is still a pretty awesome night time sleeper, generally going 10-12 hours straight!  It's super excellent!  Most of the time if she wakes in the night, she now goes back to sleep fairly easily.  I often have to hold her hand for 10-15 minutes, but I'll take that over screaming any day!  

Talia loves to eat!  She is now eating pretty much everything we do, and we try to make our dinners so we can share them.  Leaving out salt and spice is not totally second nature yet, so she still has to eat purees I've made over the last couple months, but more and more she just eats a mashed or chopped version of our dinner.  She has yet to refuse to eat something outright.  She definitely has favorites though!  She is crazy for blueberries and cheese, and will eat those first without fail when offered.  She is liking eggs more and more, and went hog wild eating peanut butter off my finger today!  

The most excellent part of her eating so well is she's been gaining weight like crazy!  We've borrowed a friend's scale this week, and as of this morning she was 17 lbs 5oz, which is somewhere around the 30th percentile!  What an incredible change in the last few months! While breastfeeding is still not without its challenges, it is much less stressful now that I know she is gaining weight not just well, but outstandingly!  She's filling out all her clothes, and is quickly outgrowing 9 month clothes already! Woooooweeeee!  We shall see how she does taking a bottle at daycare next month, and how my supply responds to pumping more often!!

She's becoming less shy, as long as we don't thrust her into anyone's arms too quickly.  She adores waving at people, especially at the grocery.  She's very smiley, and is quicker to laughter these days!  She goes nuts for cats and dogs, as well as other babies.  She babbles a ton, and has definitely called for "mama" when she is needing me!  She doesn't do it consistently, but it's a start!  She's not really using sign language, although she responds to us signing.  She knows water, more, and up, and might be getting the hang of all done.

She went to a Sounders game with no problems, went bowling for the first time (mommy kicked butt!) and has had many awesome meals out with us. She's pretty darn easy going!

And now for my sad part of the post.  On Wednesday, I go back to work part time, and she will be attending daycare at Kevin's office 3 days a week.  We hadn't planned on her going until this summer, but our spot at the center opened up, and if we didn't take it we risked losing our spot entirely.  I'm really not doing very well with the whole thing.  But I'm trying to be positive about it, and I know she will have fun making new friends.  I've never been away from her for more than a few hours during the day, though, and I'm going to miss her like crazy!!!  We have so much fun together, she's the center of my universe, and being her mama is the best job I've ever had.  We have had our rough patches, but the last couple months she has blossomed and become such a buddy, and I've finally relaxed and figured our days out!  So I'm struggling with letting her go be with other people!  I did visit the daycare this week for a couple hours, and they are totally wonderful and she had a great time.  That makes it slightly easier.  But man, I hate it! Wednesday will be our first day apart.  Work better go easy on me! ;)

Happy 9 months, baby girl!! What adventures await us next month?!