OK. Here's the part where I say "Holy crap, she's ten months old, which is almost a year." But seriously, she's almost a year old. Here's what she's been up to:
- Monkey. That's what we've been calling her recently. I'm learning that being smarter every day means being more inquisitive which means that she'll try her damnedest to get her hands on whatever she's interested in. The problem is her body hasn't really caught up with what her mind wants to do yet. She isn't crawling forward, but she's figured out to launch herself forward, roll to wherever she wants to go, and spin herself around to get it. She's can push herself backward, and she even pulled herself up to a standing position on a some furniture the other day - which made us both elated and frightened at the same time.
- Four teeth and a lot of gumming. At the beginning of her tenth month we started introducing some finger foods - like the Gerber fruit and veggie puffs. After about a week she figured out what she was doing, and I'm happy to report that now most of them end up in her mouth and not on the floor. She's trying all kinds of food now, from french fries to bananas, with varying degrees of success (and mess). She's also started using a sippy cup, and I even got her to drink her morning bottle almost all by herself the other day. It's amazing to watch this completely dependent little creature learn how to do the most basic things all by herself. Sometimes the smallest steps can be the biggest accomplishments.
- No. Does the baby shake her head back and forth simply to avoid the spoon of food you are trying (unsuccessfully) to put into her mouth, or does she shake her head back and forth to say "No. I'm not hungry anymore"? I'm not sure, but sometimes it sure seems like she knows what it means. Then again, she also knows it will almost always get a reaction from the nearest adult around ("Oh. Isn't she so cute shaking her head "no."). I wonder if shaking your head back and forth means no in all cultures.
- "Mama?" "Dada." Like I've blogged about already, she's pretty much got "mama" down pat. But no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get a meaningful "dad," "dada," "daddy," or anything close to it out of her. These past few weeks my new favorite phrase has been "No. Not Mama. Dada." If she's not careful someday my new favorite phrase might be, "No. You can't borrow the car tonight. If you had thought back when you were 10 months old to throw me a "dada" every now and then, then maybe. But tonight it's no."