Personalized onesie made by Amber from The Cotton Cupcake Shoppe! |
It’s hard to believe Kate turned 11 months old last week, although I’m pretty sure she was more than happy to say goodbye to being a 10 month old! Life over the past month was pretty rough for Kate considering the bulk of it was spent recovering from her surgery. I plan to write more about this in a future post, so for her 10 month recap we’ll focus more on the fun stuff!
For starters, one of Kate’s favorite activities is taking things out of containers. It hardly matters what the objects are or what kind of container they’re in–if she can empty it, she’s happy. She could be across the room but if she hears me fill up her bucket with plastic shapes and balls she comes racing over to dump them out. I filled up a large lower drawer in our kitchen with plastic food storage containers and lids, large plastic spoons, some measuring cups and funnels, and when I’m washing dishes she goes to work emptying her big drawer of plastic. When she tires of that I open our pantry door and she empties a box filled with K-Cupsand rolls them around the floor, and then she might move on to the baskets at the end of our island where we store a variety of paperwork that Kate happily “re-files” for us.
We bought her some Playskool Busy Balls and bouncy sensory balls, and another favorite game of hers is rolling them across our hardwood floors. They have a variety of textures so they make different sounds as they roll which she loves. She’ll sit in the entryway, and G and I will sit in the kitchen and we’ll roll the balls down the hallway toward her. She tries to throw the balls back to us but isn’t quite ready to go pro yet. She loves to swat and kick them around the floor and chase after them with her new crazy crawl that allows her to sit up quicker. It buys us hours minutes of entertainment, which at this age is no small feat!
Other favorite activities include playing with tissue paper which she discovered as she helped me unwrap Christmas ornaments (video here), playing peek-a-boo (she crouches down to hide behind the coffee table and then pops up to surprise you!), playing with (and sometimes eating) dirt from the large plant on the floor (…and so the discipline starts), and crawling up the stairs which she mastered in a matter of minutes. We now let her climb up the stairs every night on her way to bed and she’s always so proud of her accomplishment once she reaches the top!
Kate’s crazy hair continues to get lots of attention, although as it gets longer it’s beginning to lay down a bit more (which makes me sad). Her top two teeth are just starting to come in (which gives her 4 teeth total), she lifts her arms up when she wants to be picked up, and she has perfected the most glorious “pouter lip” I have ever seen! One thing she doesn’t like is wearing socks. She pulls them off seconds after we put them on and then waves them around–one in each hand with a huge smile on her face–like an overzealous cheerleader.
Kate has unfortunately lost a lot of her speech over this past month due to her surgery and recovery. It’s been sad to see, but not unexpected. She still says “Mama” and “GaGa” (Grandma) but not nearly as often as she used to. She also babbles significantly less, which we’ve missed hearing. It was painful for her to talk while she was recovering, and on top of that she needs to learn how to use her palate muscle all over again now that it’s been closed, so that will take some time. Luckily she is now fully recovered and should be back to chatting up a storm in no time!
Kate’s 10 Month Stats
Bedtime: 6:45/7:00pm
Wake Up Time: We’ve been struggling with Kate’s wake-up time since her surgery. She’s been waking up around 5/5:30am but we’re hoping to eventually get back to her usual 6:30am wake-up time.
Naps: The timing of Kate’s naps have been all over the place while she was recovering, but for the most part she is still averaging two naps per day for a total of 3-4 hours/day.
Bottles: It took a couple of weeks before Kate was able to drink from her bottles without pain, and once she passed that hurdle we went back to offering her 7.5 oz bottles 4x/day (when she wakes up in the morning, wakes from her first nap, wakes from her second nap, and before bedtime).
Meals/Solids: Breakfast at 8/8:15am, lunch at 12/12:15pm, and dinner at 5:30pm. Kate was originally on an all-liquid diet following her surgery but drinking from her bottle was very painful for her (she kept trying to suck the bottle which put painful pressure on her yet-to-be-healed palate). After a couple of days we were able to start spoon-feeding her very runny pureed foods and luckily she ate that. As she healed we slowly introduced very soft finger foods, and around four weeks post-surgery Kate was finally off all restrictions and back to eating all her regular foods.
New Foods: Eggs, turkey, asparagus, mango, blueberries, persimmon, beef
Developmental Milestones & “Firsts”: First Thanksgiving and first Christmas tree (she’s been great with it). She is “accidentally” standing on her own for a few seconds (until she realizes she’s actually standing and then clutches the closest thing to her), and her top two front teeth are coming in.
Favorite Toys: Her “This Little Piggy” finger puppet book, her Dora the Explorer Busy Carnival Activity Ride (she has no idea who Dora is but she loves the music and movements of the little “carnival” on the front), Playskool Activity Balls, Fisher-Price Stride-To-Ride Lion, plastic food storage containers/kitchen utensils, and books, books, books!
Additional Kate 10 Months Posts:
Our Perfect Girl
Kate’s Crazy Hair
Things Loved in November
its so good to hear that Kate is getting back to her self! I love those videos! my daughter scooted around like that too. I hop all goes well for you and your family in the rest of this month and in 2011.
I love when she looks at you through the mirror. So cute.
I love her little seated scoot action! So cute!
So glad she’s recovered from her surgery! Love that your girl works smarter, not harder and have scoots/crawls where she wants to go! What a cutie!
Kate sounds like such a little fighter! She’s such a cutie and I’m really happy to hear that she’s recovering well and that hopefully all of this will be behind you soon.
Best wishes for her continued recovery!
S.
How wonderful to see Kate doing so well after such a tough time. You have given me so much to look forward to with our own daughter in the coming year. Thank you, as always!
She is getting so big! I never cease to be amazed at how much children grow each month at this age. Hope she’s talking your ear off soon enough 😉
I love the videos! She’s so stinkin’ cute and that crawl…the best! Looks like you know what to get her for Christmas now, too…a whole bunch of tissue paper!
I second what Darcie said – love the booty scoot! she looks like a happy little one.
Cute!! She crawls exactly like Isaac – that funny Quasimodo thing. Don’t you love the sound of her hand slapping on the hardwood as she makes her way to something? Cracks me up!
My son always rips his socks off as well so for the second winter in a row he’s basically living in footed pajamas.
(and seriously, she has the best baby hair ever
I love her little scoot! She is so precious, and I am so glad she is healing so well!
So cute! She is getting to be so big! I’m so glad she is feeling better, just in time for her first Christmas!
Dusty she is just adorable!!! And you know I love hearing your voice. :wub
Looks like she is taking after her mama with her mad volleyball skillz!
Her booty scoot is AWESOME!!! So cute!
Awwww! I love the vidoes! The tissue paper is freaking adorable! And her booty scootin boogie is so genius! Smart girl!
Your new carpet is BEAUTIFUL!
She is just such a doll D!
Kate’s got a lot of balls. Too cute. She likes the spiky blue one the bestest.
PS–You have such a nice voice!
jbhat
The carnival dance is great!
The last video is precious! It made me smile!
Don’t you love how home decor now involves lots of kiddie toys?
Kate is looking better than ever, what a blessing!
i am always amazed at her 6:45pm bedtime. just curious, did you guys have to sleep train her that way or is that just the time that she gets sleepy? also, what time do you get home from work?
i would LOVE it if my 9 month old would fall asleep earlier, but with my work schedule and picking her up from daycare, we get home at about 6pm.
by the time we play for a while and give her a bath, i put her down at about 8:30pm. my husband rarely gets to see her awake most evenings.
Thank you so much for your comments everyone! It’s hard to believe I’m already planning Kate’s 1st birthday party!
@naijababelove–We didn’t really sleep train her (although I guess I’m not quite sure what that means?). What we did do is learn more about appropriate sleep habits and patterns for her age and how to read her sleep signs, etc. and that’s how we came to land on such an early bedtime. This book: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth was really helpful for me as far as figuring out the best sleep for Kate.
We usually get home from work around 5pm which (on days that I work) doesn’t leave us with much time with Kate in the evening before she goes to bed, but we certainly make the most of it, and I’m not willing to sacrifice her sleep to spend more time with her b/c we learned early on that she really needs her sleep otherwise she’s VERY cranky. I actually wish we could get her bedtime pushed back a little later but we tried that recently (going back to a 7pm bedtime) and she quickly turned into a little grizzly bear b/c she was so overly tired. Right now we’re back to a 6:30/6:45pm bedtime and she’s much happier. Someday she’ll be able to stay uup longer, just not right now.