ten months

It was a big month for the little monster. She's up to all sorts of new tricks. Ski and I also decided to write her back into the will this month after permanently banishing her last month. So now when we croak she's back to having her little mitts on our fortune (or at this rate, more likely, our debt). She slept through the night more nights than she didn't and while it was probably hovering around the 70/30 ratio I'm in a good mood today and have decided to let her live anyway.

The army crawl, Max-style is in full effect. Did you hear that, my daughter can MOVE! I was excited for about 10 minutes until I realized all of the new obstacles and work this was going to mean for me. Now instead of giving me the evil eye from the other room, with whine of course, she can crawl over and plant herself at my feet and whine. Which makes cooking dinner a bit of a challenge. She is sort of thinking about working on her strength so that she can crawl like a normal baby but it has been fully documented that she is LAZY so I'm not holding my breath. She's just starting to pull herself up to stand next to things and will 'walk' across the room if you let her hang on to your hands. For a while there I wasn't sure if she was ever going to show any interest in moving but she came around. Crawling and assisted walking all in one month. Wait a second kid, SLOW DOWN. I almost sort of want her to grow up but most of me just wants her to stay my little baby forever.

The Army Crawl

Walking. I can see where this is headed and am having nightmares about the money I could spent in physical therapy trying to get my back to recover from hunching over teaching her to walk.

My absolute favorite development this month is her fake laugh. Sometimes she'll look at me out of the blue and fake laugh...just to get a reaction out of me. She knows her "laughing" will make me laugh and she does it all of the time. The cats are fake-funny. The plants are fake-funny. Everything is so gosh darn fake-funny. So now we have a fake cry and a fake laugh, am I sensing a pattern here? She definitely has a future in dramatic arts. She'll real-laugh anytime I say plain old words in weird tones. Like yesterday I said "hairbrush" in a high-pitched voice and it got the cutest belly laugh out of her. I said it over and over and she laughed and laughed and laughed.

She's really starting to communicate. One day a while back when I was changing her diaper I casually pointed up at the light and said "LIGHT" without a second thought. You know, my motherly duty is to try to teach her something even if it is as mundane as the word light. Then I went about my business. The next day when I laid her down to change her diaper she pointed at the light with a fury, with this ultra-pleased look on her face like 'You know what that is, Mom, it is a LIGHT." Now anytime I say "Light" her eyes scan the room until she finds something that qualifies as a light and she furiously points at it. I think she's a good candidate for baby sign language so I rushed out a bought a book and I still haven't read it yet. I've been making up my own signs though. She'll throw her hands up in the air and say "Aaa Da" when she's done eating. 'ALL DONE!' She still says Kitty when she sees the cats although that has become more of a 'it-keee' and she says, 'Dada' (with a point) when she sees Ski. She'll point at me if Ski asks, "Where's Mommy?" But I'm not totally sold she can say it yet. I absolutely LOVE that she very deliberately points with JUST one finger. You could almost see her examining her hands trying to figure out how to stick one finger out and when she figured it out she decided to point at EVERYTHING.

She got her first taste of formula this month and she was not impressed. The look of complete disgust on her face was downright hilarious. I tried a couple of different kinds and actually ended up with one that seems to be OK. She's only getting a couple of ounces a day mixed in with her breast milk and solids at daycare but I wasn't making enough milk for her so formula it was. I have to say, I lived through it. Miss Anti-Formula herself lived through it. And Renee is still kicking...IT IS A MIRACLE. Now if only I had done it six months ago instead of getting up three times a night to pump to make sure I had enough milk for her for daycare, I think I might have at least one or two shreds of my sanity left. Oh well, being a raging lunatic is fun in its own right.

She is still toothless unless you want to count the large volumes of drool that are pouring out of her mouth at any given moment. Becky at daycare keeps saying, "She is for sure teething" and I just laugh. Yeah, I've heard that one a time or two. There have been weeks when I have been SURE one is about to pop thorugh any second and then nothing. I'm really hoping that she's not one of those kids that takes like 3 weeks of torture just to pop one tooth. Seriously kid, TOUGHEN UP.

The last noteworthy thing is that we made her second late night trip to the ER this month...this time for croup. I learned that croup can fool you into seriously thinking your child is going to stop breathing and die at any given moment and that when they say the cough sounds like "seals barking" they are not exaggerating even one little tiny bit. I was awakened to the sounds of her sputtering around in her crib struggling to breathe one night at about midnight. I ran in there picked her up and told Ski to go warm up the car. By the time the car was warm she was peacefully asleep in my arms. So we turned the car off and went to lay her back down in bed and immediately the sputtering and gasping for breath started again. To the ER we went to encounter some of Duluth's very finest specimens. We waited for almost three hours with a sick baby who refused to sleep because she didn't want to miss Jose's final call to the mistress about her cheating on him again and how no one loves him. It SUCKED. When we finally got home at 3AM I ended up holding her upright so she could breathe for the rest of the night. The only good part about this croup story is that I now know what croup is like and next time we will NOT be going to the ER in the middle of the night. Mommy Lesson #749: Croup... CHECK.

There is nothing quite like a ride on the daddy airplane. Guaranteed to replace all forms of whining with giggles at the drop of a hat.

I lost count at 1,236 for how many hours we have spent at the window looking outside. I think she is looking for spring.

Playing "catch" with daddy... no fewer than 10 guaranteed minutes of no whining. I have a passionate love affair with that ball.

Don't think I don't know what you are up to, Lady. BECAUSE I'M ON TO YOU.

Finally my favorite for the month because there is NOTHING in the world like a sleeping ten-month-old. NOTHING.
   

Comments

[kim]

i love the pictures! they are gorgeous!

'light' was my first word... i always thought that was kind of weird.

[amy]

I love these shots, especially the b & w ones!

[Leslie Collins]

The last picture is absolutely gorgeous.

Reyna says light, too. That's funny. It's such a random word.

I think it's neat that you do a post like this each month. These will be great to look back on in the future.

[lib]

wow, renee is getting so big! way to go on adding a little formula in. what brand are you doing? you are awsome for making it SO long without supplementing...
she's a beauty!