10 months old

Our baby girl turns 10 months old tomorrow (1/27/11)!

I thought I'd just post a little update about her here for posterity.

Eating:

She is now eating 3 "meals" a day in addition to breastfeeding. Most of the time, it's just baby food and baby yogurt. I try to give her Cheerios, cereal puffs, yogurt melts, and other baby snacks at the end of each meal to encourage her pincer grasp and eating more crunchy/whole foods. She likes peas, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and she likes eating mango from one of those netted baby feeders.

Motor Skills:

She crawls like a champ, a very fast NASCAR champ. She cruises around our furniture and other things, and can stand alone for probably 10 seconds before sitting down. She hasn't really tried to take any steps on her own yet, but I'm alright with that. :) She's already into everything so I can't imagine how it will be when she's walking. She's still working on that pincer grasp with small food items.

Talking:

She can say "baba", "dada", "mama", "nana", and other assorted words. I definitely think she knows I'm "mama" because if Wesley has her and she wants me she says "mama" a lot. I'm pretty sure "nana" means Nina (sorry to my mom, who actually is Lucy's nana). But she babbles and squeals all day. It's really cute. I can't wait until she can say more words.

Sleeping:

Oh, sleeping. Or I guess I should say sometimes the lack of it. I know every baby is different, and I know every parent has a different philosophy about what age a baby "should" be sleeping through the night. I'm okay with the fact that Lucy is not sleeping through the night for several reasons. One, I really just now feel like she's getting to the point where we can give her enough food and calories during the day that I could expect her to be able to sleep through the night, hunger-wise. Two, 98% of the time, she wakes up, I feed her, and she goes immediately back to sleep on her own ... I never nurse her back to sleep. I nurse her and then I just put her back in the bed and almost always she will go back to sleep on her own. I think that's great. And three, I don't necessarily think that sleeping through the night means 12 hours. Most people agree that 5-6 hours at a time is considered sleeping through the night for a baby. Lucy usually goes to bed around 7:30 or 8pm, sleeps until midnight, eats, sleeps until 4:00 or 5am, eats, then wakes up around 7:30 or 8am the next morning. That is on a good night. haha. And she is pretty good about taking two consistent naps during the day, one about 3 hours after she wakes up (for about an hour or sometimes *gasp* for 2 hours!) and then an afternoon nap about 3 hours after she wakes up from her first nap. That second nap is usually short these days and she fights it hard. So if you ask me if I'm satisfied with the way Lucy sleeps, I would probably say NO. I have nights where I am in tears because I'm so tired and she keeps waking up. But those nights are the exception, not the rule, and we're just trying to be consistent with all the tips and strategies for getting her to sleep longer and we have to hope that they will catch on soon.

Personality/Pasttimes:

Lucy is usually a happy baby, and she smiles and flirts with everyone she meets. She is very focused when she plays with her toys, sometimes spending 20 minutes just on one thing like blocks or her stacking cups. She doesn't laugh all the time, but if she is tired she laughs very easily and Nina can almost always make her laugh. She loves hearing Wesley's keys in the door at the end of each workday and she looks at the door expectantly and then gives Wesley a huge grin when she sees him. She gives great snuggly hugs and she can wave and clap. I'm trying to teach her how to blow kisses now. She loves to take Nina's toys and wave them around while Nina tries to get them out of her hand. Her other favorite activities are cruising around our pots and pans rack, playing with the dishwasher when I am loading or unloading it, standing at the back window and patting the glass or playing with our ugly vertical blinds, and pulling up on Nina's dog crate and swinging the door back and forth.

So you can see we have one adorable little Lucybird on our hands. We are very grateful and every day she gets older we fall more and more in love with her.