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.