10 month Newsletter

Dear Avonlea,

You are 10 months old. At your last visit, you were 26.75 inches long and 17.9 pounds. The doctor was impressed with your attentiveness, verbal skills, and mobility. You are solidly in your 9 month clothing, but we have broken out some of the 9-12 month clothing and 12 month clothes to break up the monotony of your drawers. Your auntie says you have gotten chubby, and I have to agree. You also have amazingly delicious ham hocks for thighs and I love how you giggle when I munch on you. :)

You crawl with a fever now, scooting around everywhere. You also stand and cruise around, and in the beginning of the month starting letting go of the furniture and crashing down on your bottom and giggling. I giggle when you get back up just to crash back down and laugh. :)

Towards the end of this month, on a few separate occasions, you took a step. And then two. And then you crash into me or daddy, or the floor, and giggle like a maniac. I can SEE how badly you want to walk, and I know it's coming so fast! Soon you will be buzzing around this house and we will be regretting that we ever encouraged you to walk to begin with!

One morning while getting us ready to leave the house, I put you down in the kitchen and not even a minute later heard you whimpering. I made a few passes through the living room and dining room and when I couldn't find you, I stopped in the hallway. I heard you whimper again...and then I saw you... three stairs from the top of the staircase, and turning around to look at me! My heart stopped! You were whimpering because you didn't know how to get down. So, you also learned how to climb the stairs this month! And we also learned to put up a baby gate!

Your taste in food has gotten much better, you basically eat what we eat now. And if we even try to give you something different, you just whine until we give you some of what we are eating. Which is fine with us, because it's one less meal to make. You even eat salmon- I can't believe MY daughter eats salmon! Insane!

You had been doing well with sleeping through the night, but this month have made a mockery of us, taking over an hour to go to sleep and then waking 4-5 times per night. None of us are getting any sleep, and we are all cranky and overtired. By the time this blog posts, we will have already started some "sleep training" from The Sleep Lady, called The Sleep Lady Shuffle. We hope that soon we will all be able to sleep a little easier.

You also had your first sleepover this month with Grandma and Grandpa, leaving us alone in our house for the first time since you were born! It was glorious, and we got to go out to a play, and dinner, and not have to worry about rushing home to you. You had a great time and we are excited to keep this trend going! :)

Your verbal skills have remained the same, and while you haven't learned any new words, you make sounds that sound like our words constantly, leaving us to say "did she just say ___? or did it just SOUND like it??"

Soon, we need to start planning your first birthday party- I can't believe it's almost been a year....WHERE DID THIS YEAR GO??? That statement has a whole new meaning once you have a child.

We have lots of pictures to post in addition to this newsletter. Stay tuned!!

We love you monkey girl!