Lila is now in the double digits for months -- our little girl turned 10 months on August 26th! This past month was the first time I realized that, in many ways, she's more like a toddler than a baby now (the biggest reason -- she's scooting on her belly now!). Of course she still is very much a baby, but she looks and acts so much older than she did just a month ago! It's like she's a whole new person.
Physical stats:
I haven't weighed Lila since she was weighed at the doctor's office on August 2nd. That day she weighed 17 pounds, 5 ounces and measured 28.75 inches long. I can definitely tell she has gained weight since then -- she just feels heavier when I pick her up and carry her around. I would guess she's maybe 18 pounds now. And her 6-12 month onesies fit her like a glove, so she's gotten longer, too, by at least another quarter-inch, since that size is supposed to fit babies 27-29 inches long.
Last week, I brought out Lila's warm-weather 12-18 month clothes. She doesn't have very many, so I went and bought a few outfits from BabyGap for her that she can wear until it gets cold. One of the outfits is this periwinkle blue shirt and a matching pair of capri pants, and they are literally the same color as her eyes. She looks gorgeous in that color. I'll have to post a photo of her in it.
Lila's hair has gotten so long that she's starting to look like her brother did at that age. She's got the old Kate Gosselin look now -- a bunch of short hair sticks up on the top of her head while the front portion lies flat. Putting a bow in doesn't really help, since the bow holds down the long hair in front but not the short hair in back. You can kind of see this in this picture from her photo shoot:
align="left">Eating:
I hate to say it, but nursing Lila has become quite a chore. She is so unbelievably restless while she's nursing that it takes forever, and sometimes she won't even sit still long enough to nurse from the second side. If I give her her blanket while she's nursing, she'll stay content a little longer. But there are just too many things she wants to do! It's especially hard to nurse her if she happens to spy one of her toys beforehand (or anything else she thinks looks fun to play with, like a colorful magazine or an empty box).
If it gets worse (and I pray that it doesn't), I may need to start pumping so I can give her the breastmilk in a cup. She has been practicing a little with water in a straw cup, but she just likes to chew on it. Today I bought her a beginner's sippy cup (I left all of John's old sippy cups in Illinois), and she thinks that's a chew toy too. We'll keep practicing with it at mealtime.
Thankfully, Lila is still a great solid food eater. She has only turned her nose up once to a jar of baby food, and that was the Earth's Best vegetable turkey dinner. (It's funny, though, because she used to eat that one all the time with no problems.) About a week or two after her 9-month birthday, we started giving her yogurt and cheese. She didn't really care for the cheese the one time we gave it to her, but I think I need to try a different type. I just tore a piece of Colby Jack cheese into little pieces for her. Cheese crumbles would probably be better. The yogurt was a hit, though (YoBaby blueberry yogurt).
Her new favorite food is puffs -- she just can't get enough of them! She tried them for the first time on August 11th, and it only took her a day or two to get really good at eating them. I couldn't believe how fast she figured out how to pick them up and put them in her mouth. Now she eats them so fast that I hardly have enough time to pour more onto her tray before she gets impatient! She eats the Happy Bellies organic puffs in the banana and greens flavors. Here's a video from August 12th of her eating puffs at dinner:
Schedule/sleeping:
Lila's schedule is starting to change. Now that's she's older, she can be awake for longer stretches between naps (3-3.5 hours). This is wonderful in the mornings, since it allows us to get out of the house for a while longer before we have to come back to lay her down. She always falls asleep right away for her morning nap if she's in her crib. But lately it's gotten tricky in the afternoons. She usually wakes up from her first nap just before John goes down for his nap, and the past few weeks she doesn't want to go down for her afternoon nap until at least 2.5-3 hours have passed, even if she's tired and rubbing her eyes. (If I try putting her down before then, she'll roll around in her crib for awhile, babbling and squealing, until she starts getting mad that no one is coming to get her.) But this means that she wants to take her afternoon nap just as John is waking up from his nap and we can't get out of the house a second time!
So today I tried to go back to her earlier morning naptime of about 2.5-3 hours after she wakes up (between 9:30 and 10 a.m.), and it worked perfectly. I laid her down at 9:45, and she fell asleep a litle after 10. She was awake at 11:45, which was early enough for her to need her afternoon nap earlier. She was tired again at 2:30, so I laid her down then and she fell right asleep. It worked out great because she woke up from that nap around 3:45 -- shortly after John woke up from his nap -- and we were able to take an afternoon outing to the park.
Lila has also been a little more resistant to going to bed at her usual time of 7:00 p.m., which is at least in part a result of her napping later in the day. It doesn't help that she gets riled up when she's playing with John in the bathtub and/or in his room during the nightly bedtime routine. The hardest part is getting her to settle down to nurse. Once she has nursed, she's usually calm enough to go down for the night.
Unfortunately, Lila is still waking up at least once at night. I really have no idea what wakes her up. I give her about 10 minutes to try to calm herself down before I go to her. I pick her up, sing her a song or two, rewrap her in her blanket, and lay her back down. She usually quiets right down and goes back to bed. If she doesn't go right back to bed, or if she keeps waking up again every 5-10 minutes, I assume she's hungry and nurse her. I have dropped the nighttime feeding she used to have around 10 p.m., though, and only nurse her when she genuinely seems hungry.
Teething:
One of the teeth on the top next to her front teeth came in maybe a week ago, and the one on the other side of her front teeth should be breaking through any day. So technically she has five teeth now, with the sixth almost here! All of the teeth on top make her look so much older. You can see her top front teeth really well in this photo:
Playtime:
Lila's new favorite thing to do is to play with this suitcase John has that we put all his Mega Bloks in. She gets so excited when she sees the suitcase that she starts making this high-pitched grunting noise that sounds like she's trying to communicate with it (I can't imitate it, but it's hilarious). She also starts breathing in and out like she's in the middle of running a race. We always do the bedtime routine in John's room (because it's much bigger than Lila's room), and she will amuse herself for a good long while with climbing in and out of the suitcase and moving around the blocks.
The playroom is almost finished now (we just have to buy one more bookshelf from Land of Nod, I think -- I will post a photo soon), and Lila really likes pulling up on the shelves and taking books and toys off of them. It's a good workout for her! She also still enjoys tipping over her Pottery Barn toy buckets and rummaging around inside. Generally, anytime she can make a mess of something, she's going to enjoy it. Another example is the Leapfrog alphabet magnet set on our fridge -- if we pass by it while I'm holding her, she'll literally throw herself at it to grab at the magnets and drop them on the floor.
Overall, though, like most babies, her favorite toys really aren't toys at all. She will go crazy over a piece of paper or a magazine but not take a second glance at a toy I've given her. The other day, my new contacts came in the mail, and Lila played with the boxes of contacts and the bigger box that they came in for at least 20 minutes.
Sounds/talking/signing:
Much to my delight, Lila added to her repertoire of sounds this month -- as of August 19th, she now says "ma" and will string the syllable together to say "ma...ma" (with separation in between) and "mama" (no separation)! Of course she probably isn't referring to me, but it's really nice to hear!
As I mentioned earlier, she also started making the high-pitched grunting sounds and the out-of-breath running sounds when she sees something she really wants to play with. In the last post, I forgot to mention the first real "word" Lila ever said -- it sounds something like "goom" or "boom." I can't make out whether it's a g or b at the beginning. She's been saying that for at least 2-3 months, maybe longer. I never wrote down when it started.
Lila is a very avid gesticulator (yes, it's a word). Grandma Kay Ellen has noticed that Lila holds her hands up and daintily moves her fingers as if she's playing piano. She LOVES to wave and will wave to us and other people all the time. When she's excited, Lila flaps her arms up and down like a penguin.
I started signing to Lila this past month, mostly at mealtime, in the hopes that she'll soon learn the signs for "eat," "more," and "all done." I think she understands what I mean when I sign "more" to her now. She doesn't sign it back to me, but she does start saying "ma...ma." Maybe she's trying to say "more?"
Other milestones:
The biggest milestone Lila met this past month was becoming mobile! She started trying to scoot around on her belly in mid-August, and she had gotten good enough at it by the week of August 22nd that I had to baby-proof her play areas. It's so different having a mobile baby -- much, much harder. I knew it was coming soon, but nothing prepares you for it.
Lila can also now.....
.....sit up in her crib (as of the end of July/early August)
.....pull herself up to standing on her activity table without assistance (as of last week)
.....pull herself up to standing in John's crib (as of last week)
and
.....bend down from her activity table to pick up a toy (as of August 25th)
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