Leah 10 Months Old

Leah, you are ten months old! Right now, you are about 30 inches tall and weigh 19 pounds. You are wearing 12 month clothes, size 3 diapers, and size 3-4 shoes.

Your big milestone this month is that you OFFICIALLY became a WALKER! The last couple of days, you have decided that walking is your preferred way to get places. You still have difficulty changing surfaces from carpet to hard wood and vice versa. If you fall while trying to get somewhere specific (like getting the cats), you will crawl the rest of the way there. It's really weird to see you just walk around the corner and look at me while I'm doing something in another room. You just seem so grown up! (There is about 2 weeks difference between these two movies.)

You are starting to play more independently and it's fun to just watch you figure out your toys. You've been trying lately to put the shapes in the correct holes in the shape shorter, but you don't quite have the fine motor skills to put the shapes in correctly. You also like to copy mommy and use the mallet to hit the notes on your xylophone. Your favorite thing to do with any toy is to make noise! You have an old water bottle that we filled up with dried noodles and you love to shake that around. Mommy bought a new trash can (with a locking lid) and we've kept the huge box it came in around through three different garbage days because you love playing with it so much! 

You also love playing with my phone. This month, you figured out how to push the button on the bottom to make it beep. You also discovered that the screen moves with your fingers and you are able to scroll up and down.

You have started making some funny faces this month. Your daddy and mine's favorite is this one where you scrunch up your face and breathe rapidly and heavily through your nose. It cracks us up every time!

As far as foods, you have started to become a little bit pickier. You still love to eat, but if you don't like the initial taste of a food, you have started to spit it out or even turn your head to refuse it. One night, we actually caught you smelling your food before actually taking a bite of it! Your latest thing is that you want to eat independently, but unfortunately you still only have two teeth and I am having difficulty coming up with enough finger food that you are able to chew. Here is a movie of you attempting to eat oatmeal with your hands after refusing to eat off a spoon that I offered.

We've been trying waffles and pancakes for breakfast because they are more finger food friendly and you like those. For lunch, you love blueberry yogurt and I usually supplement with bites of my food, Cheerios, or mandarine oranges. For dinner on most nights, I usually just try to feed you right off my plate with whatever we are eating. I also cut up green beans or just feed you puréed squash with applesauce and various spices. Cheerios though are our basic go to snack and you especially like to find them hiding in your toys.

As far as talking, you mostly babble things like dada and gaga and a little bit of mama now. You like to just randomly yell and go, "ahhhhhhh." ... but not in a high pitched way. (Thank goodness!) You are starting to understand me when I talk to you. You take any chance that you have to get into the kitty food and kitty water fountain. I've been firmly telling you, "No" and removing you from the area. Sometimes you stop and move your hands away, but then go right back to doing whatever it was. If I move you across the room, 99.99% of the time you just go right back unless I put whatever it is up and out of your reach. Sometimes, you get really sad and start crying whenever I tell you no. This discipline stuff is tricky! Here you are figuring out our miserable attempt to childproof with a hairband.

We have really been able to get into a schedule recently. It probably has to do with all of the cold weather and snow/ice that has been canceling our library days and play dates, so we've been stuck at home a lot. We also stayed in for a week to make sure that we wouldn't spread daddy's flu bug that we thankfully were protected from with the flu vaccine we both received at your six month appointment.

So your current schedule is that you wake up sometime between 7 and 7:30am. We have breakfast and play until 9:30am when you start to get sleepy. You usually sleep until around 11am. We play for a little while and then have lunch at noon. After playing some more, you start getting grumpy and tired for your second nap around 1:30pm and you sleep until around 2:30pm. We have dinner at 5pm and I watch you for sleepy cues/level of grumpiness to determine when we will start your evening routine. The earliest we will start is 6:30pm and the latest is 7:15pm. It takes between 30-45 minutes for bath time, lotion time (you get REALLY dry skin even with a humidifier running all night in your room), and a possible story if you aren't too sleepy by that time.

You are still nursing about seven times a day. I do an early morning feeding at 4:30am when daddy leaves for work, another one when you wake up for the day, before and after both of your naps, and before bedtime. Unfortunately, you've bitten mommy a couple times, so we're trying to figure that one out. One time, I reacted and said, "Ouch! You hurt mommy! NO bite!" You looked at me with the saddest eyes, pouty lips, and just started bawling (with TEARS!) and cuddling up to me. I think I may be starting to see a little bit of a sensitive side to you.

You are great in the car and rarely fuss when we are moving. Sometimes you put up a little bit of a fight when I'm buckling you in, but for the most part you are fine as soon as the car is moving. You also do a great time when grocery shopping. You love to look all around the store at the people and at all of the vibrant colors on the packaging. Some Saturdays when we do our grocery shopping, we have stopped by the pet store to get stuff for daddy's fish tank. You love playing with the shelter cats and watching the birds in their cages. You love animals!

Church with you is like running a marathon. You're pretty good entertainment for the pews around us. You like to crawl after the deacons (This is all of the boy chasing I can handle right now!) while they are passing the sacrament and you watch everyone with avid fascination as they put the bread into their mouths because you know they are eating something. I had someone tell me the other week that you were "Adorable!" but that she was exhausted just watching me chase after you during all of the meetings. 

Mommy and Daddy went on our first date since you were born and Grandma H. babysat. We found out that you don't take a bottle anymore that day and so we started doing some intense sippy cup training in the hopes that you can continue to stay hydrated if Mommy and Daddy try to go on another date before you are weaned. You are really great at getting the water out of the sippy cup, but I estimate that about 75% runs out of the sides of your mouth soaking your clothes.

It is exciting watching you grow and learn. It is incredible the love that I feel for you. I love you so much and feel so blessed to be your mommy!