Two months till cake!

CLee,

You have been on the MOVE this month little girl! You are always moving, never staying still for even a few minutes.  You wear me out just watching you!  When we went for your nine month doctor's appointment your pediatrician told us that you hadn't put on much weight because you are always on the move and you haven't stopped that.  It's funny because you still prefer to army crawl more than regular crawl.  You can go SO FAST and you pull yourself with your arms and push off with your toes.  It's like you're doing hundreds of calf raises each day!  It seems like so much work to move like that rather than regular crawl but you are much faster that way so I guess that's why you prefer it.

This month you have also increased dramatically in your ability to get down from standing.  At your nine month birthday all you could do was fall backwards onto your bottom.  But now you get up and down like a pro.  Last night I was sitting in the recliner and you were on the floor with Daddy holding on to the footrest.  You had no problems getting down then getting back up over and over and over.  You are also cruising down the couch and today you were standing up against the wall and I was standing back from you a little bit and you turned around and stepped towards me.  You wouldn't let go of the wall until you had hold of me, but I was impressed! It won't be long before you are walking around here!

Despite your doctor's promises that you were perfectly healthy and that you were fine at the weight you were, we spent this month dedicated to getting some more meat on your bones.  We found that you are basically a bottomless pit for food, you will keep eating it as long as we put it in front of you for the most part.  You are almost 100% eating finger foods.  You HATE having us feed you with a spoon and so we try and avoid that as much as we can.  Some of your favorite things right now are Yo-Baby Yogurt, pancakes, waffles, shredded cheese, any kind of fruit that's cut up, chicken (in any form), pasta (as long as there is some sort of sauce), goldfish, puffs, and lil crunchies.  Your newest favorite thing to do that drives us mad is put your food covered hands in your hair.  I think you're checking to make sure we didn't sneak a bow on you or something but it frustrates us to no end, especially if you just had a bath!  You get messy eating and you love every second of it.  It is so much fun to take you out to dinner with us because you love the crowds and you love just gobbling up whatever we put in front of you.  I hope you remain such a good eater.

But our plan to put on some weight appears to be working.  We weighed you on the Wii Fit a few days ago and it said that you were 17 pounds! That's about a pound and a half of growth in a month! Because of all of that you have outgrown some of your 9 month clothes and are able to wear some 12 month clothes.  I guess that's good since your Easter dress is a 12 month size!  You are wearing size 3 diapers also.  And you got your first pair of big girl shoes this month and have enjoyed wearing them!

Your schedule has kind of gone back and forth while we tried to figure out what was best for you.  You were waking up early in the mornings so we tried to scale back your daytime naps to have you sleep later in the morning.  That was a disaster.  We were keeping you up longer than you needed to be up and so were too tired to go to sleep during your naps and would just play.  We eventually came back to our original schedule and so far it's still working out for us.  You get up at 8 am (after waking up and going back to sleep a time or two), nap from 10 - 12 and 2:30 - 4:30 and go to bed at 8 pm.  You are still nursing four times a day and eating food three times a day.  You occasionally drink juice if you need it but most days you don't.  You only drink juice out of a sippy cup.

You are our sunshine little one.  We love each and every day and moment that we get to spend with you.  God has blessed us so tremendously by putting you in our lives.  We can only pray that we are the kind of parents that He wants us to be and that you need us to be. 

I love you!
Mommy