Mohawk

10 Months!

Oh my dear heavens, Lila Jane! You are TEN MONTHS OLD!!! I feel like we're on a roller coaster zooming toward your first birthday! Let me tell you how big you are now. BIG. That's how big. I haven't measured or weighed you lately, but I know you're VERY heavy to carry around, and I know that when you stand up as you so often do, you're VERY tall. I told Granny tonight that I had put a brick on your head to stop you from growing any more. Girl, if I thought for a second that it might work, we'd replace every bow in your collection with a BIG brick!! The weather is finally starting to break a bit and give us a couple cooler days. I'm almost disappointed to report that all of the 18 month clothes I bought you for Fall/Winter fit JUST FINE. Some of the pants are a little long, but your big fat cloth diaper takes up some of the room.
You have gotten to be BUCK WILD! You no longer sit in laps for long periods of time. You like to be on the move! You play in the floor happily for ages. You pull up easily to furniture, and have started to cruise around it pretty easily in the last week or so. Yesterday (ok, a couple days past your 10 mo. Birthday; Mommy's running late.) we took you to the pumpkin patch. (More photos coming soon!) I stood you up behind a pumpkin thinking you would lean over and hold yourself up on it. But you didn't. You just stood there! You stood on your own for a LONG time behind that pumpkin before you finally leaned over and put your hands on it! For the last month or so, I've been predicting that you'll walk right around your first birthday. We'll see how close I am. Now that you're standing alone, you might take off a bit earlier than that, but I know you still have a lot to work on with balance and coordinating your feet to work just the way you want them. You're starting to figure out how to use your little push walker, but you just don't quite have the hang of it yet.

You continue to be an amazing eater! We still haven't found anything that you won't eat! Highlights this month included more Indian food, Irish food, Vietnamese, and more! You even ate corned beef and sauerkraut that Mommy could barely stomach! You typically eat your ENTIRE plate of food at school, and often even want more. You've gotten really adept at your straw sippy cup, and maneuver it very well. We're really working on keeping you from tossing it overboard when you're in the high chair, though! You are certainly learning the word "no", and will usually shake your head "no" whenever we say the word. You definitely know what it means as well, and you'll always shake "no" when you don't want or don't like something!

You only take one bottle a day for bedtime, and the rest of the day is sippy cups. Over the last couple weeks, I've weaned you from pure formula down to a 25% formula/75% whole milk mix. You're fine with plain whole milk as well, but I'm trying to use up the last can of formula before we give it up completely. I really debated about this one, but we've decided to go with the Organic whole milk for you. It costs about double what the store brand milk costs, but it's still a LOOOOT cheaper than formula, so I feel like it's something worth the cost for you. I've just read enough scary things about all of the hormones in milk that it really makes me nervous. I'm not going to take the organic milk to school or anything, but I figure the amount you drink at home is significant enough to make it worth it.
We're still working on some sign language with you. You haven't really seemed to pick up on any actual signs, but you definitely understand that movements have meaning. You've been waving and shaking your head both yes and no for a while now. You just started clapping last week.

Your hemangiomas all continue to slowly, but surely, resolve themselves. All of them are still there, but I rarely even notice them anymore. Sometimes the one in your lip looks a little bigger than other times, but it's really nowhere NEAR as big as it originally was.

You had some big struggles with allergies/asthma this month, and ended up on breathing treatments with albuterol, along with steroids and antibiotics. You had a rough few days, but overall, you still stayed your regular happy self! You didn't really love the breathing treatments, but I could put you in a high chair with some food or small toys, and you tolerated them really well! You've been off all of the medicine for a couple weeks now, but you started some coughing again early this morning, so we might not be out of the woods yet. I started you on Zyrtec for the allergies, so we're hopeful that that will do the trick.

Every month you change and grow SO much, but I think this month you have really seemed to get a lot older to me. Your face is changing and looking older, and you're starting to act so much older. You love to really concentrate on your play, whether it's putting all of your nesting toys together in the bathtub or turning every page of a book. When you want something, you get so determined to get it, but you almost always respond to a firm "NO." You're even starting to leave in your hairbows a bit longer!

Lila Jane, your daddy and I love you SO very much. I often feel like we aren't reading to you quite enough, or haven't spent quite enough time playing together. But at the end of the day, I know that we have LOVED you enough that everything else will fall into place. I will never let you go to bed wondering if you are loved. Keep growing, Lila Jane.

Picture-palooza!

I'm having another big camera clean-off! These are just the recent ones from my little camera! I decided I best get moving on these if I want to be caught up before Lila's big TEN month birthday!! (That's 5/6 year, Doug.)

So, as you can see above, I finally transitioned Lila to her "big girl" car seat! She was really busting out of the last one, and was getting very close to it's limits on both height and weight, so I figured it was time to make the move. It broke my heart to see that BIG big kid carseat in my car!! Where did my baby go??

These next pics are classic school shots. The kids were studying the farm, so they played in chocolate pudding "mud" and orange jello "haystacks". I think it was quite educational, don't you?


This is one of those pics that I think we'll look back on and laugh SO hard in a few years. All of the kids were lined up at the little short wall in the room having melt-downs. And, as usual, there was Lila right in the middle of it all, happy as a clam. She cracks me up! Her friends here are Meghan, Vera Kate (in rear), Lila, Molly, and Elliott.
The Cundiff clan really enjoys hanging on the front porch after dinner. Those last few minutes before bed are often Lila's fussiest, as she's starting to get SO tired. The swing always works it's magic and gets us through to bathtime. This night, I took Lila in for her bath, then brought her back out to Clay for story time. Is there anything cuter than a jammied baby on the front porch for story time??
You might be seeing this little ensemble again sometime! Lila's FIRST ever school pictures were a couple weeks ago, and you KNOW we had to go all out glam for her first pictures! I do have to admit, she was the only kid that showed up for school pics with a tutu and outfit changes! Ha! The photographer was VERY nice about it.
Ok, I have no idea what this picture was about. But I love the outfit, so I'll post it anyway!
Lila's not the fan of naptime. She's really afraid she's going to miss something. In this pic, she was fighting sleep and standing in her crib fussing while she waited her turn for a teacher to come pat her back. The pitiful fussing was kinda cracking me up, so I grabbed the camera. I NEVER get cry pictures of her, so I thought this might be my chance. No such luck. She saw the camera and started cheesing!
Another nap procrastination tool... the face smoosh!! She does this all the time, and it cracks me UP! It took me days to finally get a pic of her doing it, but it was worth it!
As you might have notices, I'm really digging finding all of these little vintage dresses for LJ. This one in particular just melts my soul. You can't really even see the hand embroidered kitten on the front! The dress is two pieces, with the gingham and white parts separate, and cost me a grand total of fifty cents at a yard sale. SCORE!
This was another of my fifty cent yardsale finds. I love the smocking!
I don't even know what to call this outfit! It fits Lila to a T, though! The skirt is almost like a thin tutu, and the tights are made with the shoes knit right in! I love this girl for letting me play dress-up!!
No picture to prove it, but Lila finally clapped for the first time tonight! I've been working with her on it forever, and I was SO glad she finally did it!! I've really been working on some sign language with her, too, and I'm so anxious to see if she actually picks up any of it before she starts saying the words! LOL

Have a good night, and check back soon for more camera clean-up and the big 10 month post!