Ten months. Ten! That's almost 1 year. Aach!
Crawling and Standing
As you may have seen with the videos and pictures, our littlest one is mobile! After crawling backwards for a few weeks in her ninth month, she took off and now squeals with joy as she chases us around, her little hands slapping the wood floor.
But she is on her way to more-- instead of starting by pulling up, she started to stand by pushing up, first off a prone parent and now off of anything (and sometimes even just the floor). Throwing her hands up into the air, she smiles, squeals and occasionally even claps for herself while hovering in an unstable equilibrium. On the very few occasions when she has miscalculated and fallen forward, we have been reminded that catching oneself with one's hands is not an instinct but a *learned* reaction...
Three weeks ago she started to step while we were holding her hands and now seems to enjoy being walked around the house. Luckily there are plenty of volunteers to help her walk, even when she doesn't want to.
Sounds
Vivian has added "ma" to her vocal repertoire; once she said "ma ma" when she saw me but it hasn't been repeated so can't be said to be a first word. She enjoys making noises; one of her favorite things is to rub her fist back and forth over an O-shaped mouth to make an 'ah-wah-ah-wah' sound.
She also really loves music. When the radio is on, she'll respond to the brief interludes of music between news stories by bopping up and down. We recently decided to let her play with her sound machine-- we use one of the white noise sounds while she's sleeping but there are several tunes to dance to: Rocking out to her sound machine
Tricks
There are now three tricks in her hat: she'll put her hands straight up when asked "how big is Vivi?", she'll touch her head when we ask, "where's your hair?" and she'll clap when we say, "yay!" or clap or start the patty-cake rhyme. She's also occasionally made the sign for 'daddy' that Dave made up (hands straight up in the air). It's so much fun to see her responding to our words and she seems to enjoy entertaining everyone, too.
And another party trick (that's actually useful); it turns out that she can drink through a straw.
Books
In general, Vivian will turn the pages of a book that we're reading and stop and touch some pictures. When we read one of those with tactile pages, she knows just where to look. And I noticed several months ago that she reaches out to touch the eyes of animals (eg. in Brown Bear, Brown Bear), showing that she has some idea of what she's seeing. And in general, she show a real fondness toward:
Animals
When she see one in a book or real life, she coos and coos. In fact, she pushes away books that don't have pictures of animals. Her nanny usually brings her dog so it could be just early exposure but it seems she's on her way to be an 'animal person.' She had the same reaction the other day when Adi was pretending to be a dog, too.
Resistance
I've realized that, when Vivian is nursing, she likes to push (like her feet against the arm of the chair) or pull (like on a burp cloth or my braids). It has made me wonder if this is a personality trait-- you hear that kids like "pushing boundaries" in order to see where they are but I wonder if sometimes they just want to feel that resistance, like a dog likes pulling on a rope. It'll be interesting to see as she gets older but hopefully I can keep this in mind (to keep my patience!)
Cloth
She continues to have a fondness for cloth things. When drinking her milk at bedtime, she pulls a burp cloth over her eyes or rubs it along her face. Stuffed animals are some of her favorite toys, which she shows by cooing at them and burying her face in them. And she seems to like to lay her cheek on the carpet.
Sleeping
There might be nothing better than a baby who goes to sleep when you want her to. Vivian is certainly keeping our lives easy in this regard-- after a quick bedtime routine, she often pushes out of our arms in her attempt to get into the crib. After rolling over to grab 'Erin the Giraffe', we rarely hear from her for 10 or 11 hours. The only negative is that she wakes up if we come into the room, so no stolen good-night kisses from her. But really, we appreciate it as much as possible. (A note: she is also psychic and likes to prove me wrong. One hour after I wrote this, she woke up crying and carried on for 2 hours that night, then wouldn't go down for a nap on the weekend. Knock-on-wood that this then passed but there is a reason that we are superstitious about ever mentioning a "good bedtime").
Eating
I hope to do a whole post about 'baby-led weaning' sometime but I want to include in this update how well it's worked for us. Essentially the theory is to start babies off on big pieces of food (not purees) so they learn how to chew and swallow as they learn how to eat, not to feed them pureed food until they develop the 'pincer grip' around 8-9 months old. So from the age of 6 months, we've been feeding Vivian large, thin pieces of foods like apples, pizza crust, bell peppers, strawberries, tofu... basically anything that is somewhat soft. And she has very rarely gagged or thrown-up and (so far, knock-on-wood for real this time) never choked. We have done a mix of these finger foods and pureed foods (which the BLW people seem to be against) but she's definitely leaning more toward the finger foods now. In fact, she used a spoon to eat for the first time to (messily) eat quinoa tonight (9/19).
She has tried just about everything except for nuts and meat. When we gave her her first piece of cheese, I swear she looked at us as if to say, "You've been feeding me unsalted peas and rice puffs when there is cheese in the world? What else are you people hiding from me?" But seriously, her favorite food right now is fresh tomatoes (it helps enormously that they're straight out of the garden); for the past few months it has been pureed spinach and onions. But raspberries? Peaches? Those get dumped right off the tray. So she definitely has odd taste, although she's recently shown an unlimited fondness for pasta. But mostly she seems to want variety-- not from meal to meal but from bite to bite. Often she'll return to eating something if she gets something else for a while. And she has developed a fondness for water from the sippy cup (or any cup from which she can get it). Today she kept crying when I tried to take the water away in order to nurse her. I guess that bodes well for weaning, eventually! (Update: now she won't touch tomatoes. She still likes cheese, though).
There is so much that I'm forgetting but I'd like to get this posted (since it started out as the nine-month update and now is a month late anyway...)
Crawling and Standing
As you may have seen with the videos and pictures, our littlest one is mobile! After crawling backwards for a few weeks in her ninth month, she took off and now squeals with joy as she chases us around, her little hands slapping the wood floor.
But she is on her way to more-- instead of starting by pulling up, she started to stand by pushing up, first off a prone parent and now off of anything (and sometimes even just the floor). Throwing her hands up into the air, she smiles, squeals and occasionally even claps for herself while hovering in an unstable equilibrium. On the very few occasions when she has miscalculated and fallen forward, we have been reminded that catching oneself with one's hands is not an instinct but a *learned* reaction...
Three weeks ago she started to step while we were holding her hands and now seems to enjoy being walked around the house. Luckily there are plenty of volunteers to help her walk, even when she doesn't want to.
Sounds
Vivian has added "ma" to her vocal repertoire; once she said "ma ma" when she saw me but it hasn't been repeated so can't be said to be a first word. She enjoys making noises; one of her favorite things is to rub her fist back and forth over an O-shaped mouth to make an 'ah-wah-ah-wah' sound.
She also really loves music. When the radio is on, she'll respond to the brief interludes of music between news stories by bopping up and down. We recently decided to let her play with her sound machine-- we use one of the white noise sounds while she's sleeping but there are several tunes to dance to: Rocking out to her sound machine
Tricks
There are now three tricks in her hat: she'll put her hands straight up when asked "how big is Vivi?", she'll touch her head when we ask, "where's your hair?" and she'll clap when we say, "yay!" or clap or start the patty-cake rhyme. She's also occasionally made the sign for 'daddy' that Dave made up (hands straight up in the air). It's so much fun to see her responding to our words and she seems to enjoy entertaining everyone, too.
And another party trick (that's actually useful); it turns out that she can drink through a straw.
Books
In general, Vivian will turn the pages of a book that we're reading and stop and touch some pictures. When we read one of those with tactile pages, she knows just where to look. And I noticed several months ago that she reaches out to touch the eyes of animals (eg. in Brown Bear, Brown Bear), showing that she has some idea of what she's seeing. And in general, she show a real fondness toward:
Animals
When she see one in a book or real life, she coos and coos. In fact, she pushes away books that don't have pictures of animals. Her nanny usually brings her dog so it could be just early exposure but it seems she's on her way to be an 'animal person.' She had the same reaction the other day when Adi was pretending to be a dog, too.
Resistance
I've realized that, when Vivian is nursing, she likes to push (like her feet against the arm of the chair) or pull (like on a burp cloth or my braids). It has made me wonder if this is a personality trait-- you hear that kids like "pushing boundaries" in order to see where they are but I wonder if sometimes they just want to feel that resistance, like a dog likes pulling on a rope. It'll be interesting to see as she gets older but hopefully I can keep this in mind (to keep my patience!)
Cloth
She continues to have a fondness for cloth things. When drinking her milk at bedtime, she pulls a burp cloth over her eyes or rubs it along her face. Stuffed animals are some of her favorite toys, which she shows by cooing at them and burying her face in them. And she seems to like to lay her cheek on the carpet.
Sleeping
There might be nothing better than a baby who goes to sleep when you want her to. Vivian is certainly keeping our lives easy in this regard-- after a quick bedtime routine, she often pushes out of our arms in her attempt to get into the crib. After rolling over to grab 'Erin the Giraffe', we rarely hear from her for 10 or 11 hours. The only negative is that she wakes up if we come into the room, so no stolen good-night kisses from her. But really, we appreciate it as much as possible. (A note: she is also psychic and likes to prove me wrong. One hour after I wrote this, she woke up crying and carried on for 2 hours that night, then wouldn't go down for a nap on the weekend. Knock-on-wood that this then passed but there is a reason that we are superstitious about ever mentioning a "good bedtime").
Eating
I hope to do a whole post about 'baby-led weaning' sometime but I want to include in this update how well it's worked for us. Essentially the theory is to start babies off on big pieces of food (not purees) so they learn how to chew and swallow as they learn how to eat, not to feed them pureed food until they develop the 'pincer grip' around 8-9 months old. So from the age of 6 months, we've been feeding Vivian large, thin pieces of foods like apples, pizza crust, bell peppers, strawberries, tofu... basically anything that is somewhat soft. And she has very rarely gagged or thrown-up and (so far, knock-on-wood for real this time) never choked. We have done a mix of these finger foods and pureed foods (which the BLW people seem to be against) but she's definitely leaning more toward the finger foods now. In fact, she used a spoon to eat for the first time to (messily) eat quinoa tonight (9/19).
She has tried just about everything except for nuts and meat. When we gave her her first piece of cheese, I swear she looked at us as if to say, "You've been feeding me unsalted peas and rice puffs when there is cheese in the world? What else are you people hiding from me?" But seriously, her favorite food right now is fresh tomatoes (it helps enormously that they're straight out of the garden); for the past few months it has been pureed spinach and onions. But raspberries? Peaches? Those get dumped right off the tray. So she definitely has odd taste, although she's recently shown an unlimited fondness for pasta. But mostly she seems to want variety-- not from meal to meal but from bite to bite. Often she'll return to eating something if she gets something else for a while. And she has developed a fondness for water from the sippy cup (or any cup from which she can get it). Today she kept crying when I tried to take the water away in order to nurse her. I guess that bodes well for weaning, eventually! (Update: now she won't touch tomatoes. She still likes cheese, though).
There is so much that I'm forgetting but I'd like to get this posted (since it started out as the nine-month update and now is a month late anyway...)
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1 comment:
Hilarious video of rocking out to the sound machine. And hilarious what food she likes! I loved what you wrote about the cheese.
You are such a good mom. Not only your day-to-day engagement, but your intentionality to write details about your third-born! Outshining your sister, for sure.
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