Nuestra Vida Nueva: Abgail: 10 months old

Nicknames: I still call her Sunshine a lot but have added in Sugar Sugar and Favorite Baby. I also do a lot of "big tall standing up baby" and "______(fill in the blank name of food) monster" . JP is still sticking with Sweet Pea.

Temperament: sunny most of the time, and seems pleased with how much she is able to do, protesting less than last month, curious, exploring, watchful

Item/Toy We Love The Most: the stroller--we have loved our walks, the rubber ducky song

Item/Toy You Love The Most: you like to eat anything you can, especially non food items like cardboard boxes, books, and tissues. Also, again this month, anything that will help you stand up! this can be the couches, the coffee table, the dining room chairs, the bookcase, the wall, the footstool in your room, etc., and you have added in the laundry hamper/walker and anything that you can knock off the coffee table or other surfaces, magazines you can pull off the coffee table and destroy, the rubber ducky song

Things We're Loving Most Right Now: seeing how you problem solve, how you light up when you see us, your laugh, your appetite for foods, your improving communication skills

Things You’re Loving Most Right Now: standing up and cruising and pulling up on everything possible, crawling, eating food and cheerios, laughing, cuddling, picking up little tiny things off the floor, nursing in short bursts

Eating: Abigail continues to explore new solids and is now having solids about 4 times a day--oatmeal at breakfast with me, a lunch and snack at school, and then dinner with us. We are still doing a mix of purees and finger foods. Abigail has been loving watermelon and has been trying things like enchilada filling at lunch with success. She still loves bananas and carbs. She continues to nurse five or six times a day with exploring breaks during the daytime sessions.

Sleeping: The toughest sleep issue this month was when Abigail decided that waking up after 6 am was for wimps and we went from 5:40 to 5:15 to 4:50 over a few days. She would not go back to sleep no matter what we did, so we ended up taking a walk at 5:15 one day just for a change of pace. Then, as randomly as it started, it stopped. So now we appreciate our 6-6:30 am wake ups! Abigail continues to go down for the night around 7 and will eat once usually between 1-4 am. Her naps at home have started to get longer, sometimes over an hour, but then she will sometimes skip the second nap. She continues to take remarkably short naps at daycare, like one 20 minute nap total for the day, but seems chipper. She sometimes crashes around dinnertime as a result.

Playing: Right after her 9 month birthday Abigail really put together her crawling skills and has been able to combine them with pulling up, cruising, squatting and all her other gross motor skills to be a moving baby. Plus, at the end of this month she took her first steps! She is now standing for longer periods on her own and often claps for herself when she is standing since she is so proud! It has been great to watch. Abigail does lots of exploring, continues to like some of the fine motor toys we have, and is often content to play on her own for longer periods. She loves repetitive games like peekaboo and has started to play peekaboo with us using a blanket or shirt. Books appear more desirable as things to be chewed than read but she lets me read to her sometimes and still likes to turn the pages.

Growth: This is belated but at her 9 month check up Abigail was 28 1/2 inches and 17 lbs 11 oz. This is about the 70th-something percentile for height and in the 30-somethingth for weight. She was a little anemic so we are trying to work on more iron through oatmeal and some red meat. We will have her checked again at her twelve month appointment before deciding if she needs vitamins. Abigail is definitely losing some of her chubbiness due to all her movement and she continues to be a long, lean baby. We have had to tighten her diaper snaps to avoid leaks although she is still on medium rise. We are moving into more 12 month sizes although we still use quite a few 9 month outfits--some of the 9m pants are starting to be too short!

Abigail continues to chat more and babble lots of strings of consonant sounds, but no words yet. We are still working on "where's dada?" and "where's mama?" and she cooperates when she wants to. It is so fun to hear her get louder and more opinionated. She loves to chat to herself in the car too.

Overall, I think this has been a really great month! Abigail's demeanor has improved as she is happier and more able to entertain herself and is so excited to test out her new mobility skills. She went from just learning to crawl consistently and quickly at the beginning of the month to taking steps on her own at the end of it! Her demeanor has been consistently positive overall, but last month we had a few more crying fits when she could not be held or get what she wanted, and luckily those have mostly subsided. She still does not like to lie still on the changing table but she has stopped screaming at the top of her lungs every single time at least.