Monthly Photos - Months 10 and 11

We were in Hawaii for the last part of Month 11, so I got behind on the blog! Here are Month 10 and Month 11 shots!

Highlights of Month 10

Month 10 has been a fun month. Abigail is very interactive with us now, which is really fun! This month, she learned to wave bye bye, play peek-a-boo with us (where she will even sometimes pull the blanket over her face and throw it back down so we will say "Peek-a-boo!" back to her), and is starting to mimic some of the sounds we make. She babbles a lot these days and changes her inflection so that it almost sounds like she is speaking in sentences, just using words we can't yet understand! She has also started making this funny swooshing/whispering sound. Last month, she moved from screaming to blowing raspberries when she was frustrated, and this month, she has started growling or roaring instead! All of this of course makes it hard as the parent not to laugh!

She is biting down on this squirter and it keeps squirting her in the face!

She loves bathtime!

So fun!

Sharing with us

These two photos are of Abigail signing "all done!" - the only one she consistently does at this point, but she is really good at it and seems to mean it when she does it.

She has also started really paying attention to what we do and wanting to copy us. Waving bye bye or playing peek-a-boo are two examples, but she has also been really interested in us brushing our teeth and grabbing at our toothbrushes. So this month we got her her own toothbrush, which she loves! She likes the noise it makes when she pushes it against her teeth but she especially loves biting down on the bristles, then pulling it out of her mouth so she rips the bristles out of the toothbrush one by one. Funny kid!

She also seems to have discovered both her tongue and her index finger. It was like watching her discover her hands when she was 3-4 months old. It would pass in front of her face and catch her eye an then she would just stare at it. These days, she likes to revel in the discovery of both of these body parts and you can often find her with her tongue sticking out and her index finger on her tongue!

In the past couple of weeks, she has also taken to crawling under furniture or at least trying! One time, she was trying to fit her head under the changing table, but it wouldn't fit. So little problem-solver that she is, I watched her look at the space, then turn her head to the side and stick it under there so it would fit! I don't have a picture because I was laughing too hard!

Finally, at 9 1/2 months, she took her first steps. I laugh because the reason she took those first steps is because she had a spoon in her hand that she did not want to let go of and could not figure out how to crawl with it! Since then, she has gone back mainly to crawling, but every once in awhile will just walk over to something instead of crawling (again, usually when her busy hands are full!). At the end of month 10, she also started coming up on her tiptoes to see or reach an inch higher! I have a feeling we're going to have a climber on our hands! She is still mostly wearing 6-9 month clothes and her growth seems to have slowed down a bit - likely because of all the energy devoted to walking!

To make the most of winter, we created a Minnesota winter stroller and took her out for a nice walk. I was trying to figure out how to keep her contained and not falling all over, when Claude said, "Do you think the laundry basket will work?" Sure enough! It was perfect!

Abigail continues to be a great and adventurous eater, for which we are very grateful! To keep her busy while I was cooking (and give her some teething relief), she enjoyed chewing on some lemongrass.

She also thoroughly enjoyed our last CSA until spring and was very interested in tasting the different things!

Finally, like most babies, she is a Cheerios addict. I honestly don't know why she likes them so much, but like cheese or yogurt, when she sees it, she starts flailing her arms wildly, as her sign for "give me some of that good stuff!!" This month, we taught her how to use these ingenious snack cups, where you stick your hand in and pull some Cheerios out without the whole thing dumping out. Fantastic! She is a very clever little girl, so it only took her a few tries to figure it out. However, she ran into another problem she needed to solve when she got too greedy and had one hand full of Cheerios then stuck the other hand in but now didn't have a free hand to pull hand #2 out! So she just shook it really hard and eventually it came out, and she sat there with two hands full of Cheerios looking pretty darn pleased with herself!

This month, she also started learning how to use a spoon, and is actually quite good at getting at least some of it in her mouth! Though, she does like to try to eat both ends of the spoon at this point, which makes for a messy endeavor.

Finally, we celebrated Abigail's first Valentine's day in style thanks to Grandma Rae. And Uncle Aris came to visit for a few days, so that was fun!

Like I said, Abigail the Cheerio Monger