Kaitlyn's Eleventh Month: Fourth of July and Summer Fun

At 10 months and 2 days, Kaitlyn took her first couple of steps.  Once she discovered she could walk without one of us, she was off!  This video is the day after she took her first steps:

Life is so much easier with her walking, as strange as that sounds.  She is much happier and can even walk over to her toys and entertain herself for stretches of time, which is really nice for me!

One thing that has been really fun this month is that she has started singing with us.  We noticed it at church when she would sing with Stephen, but she does it consistently now.  You can see the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlwasSXqkrA.  She has started singing in the car, but does a higher pitched more sing-songy voice now.

She took her first selfie with my phone.  I was letting her play with it on the camera app and she started snapping pictures:

Then Daddy helped

It's been really warm and she has loved being in the water.  She has no fear of the water, which is both good and bad.  Good because we want her to love swimming, bad because she doesn't understand why she can't just swim away from us.

She continues to love books.  The biggest issue is that she chews on them, so much so that she gets chunks of cardboard off.  She's gotten good at turning the page and loves the books that have "peek a boo" flaps she can lift up.

She's been a great eater most of the time.  She'll try pretty much anything and has been very good at accepting weird textures.  She even ate some tuna salad I gave her.  But fruit is her favorite, especially watermelon and berries.  She usually pulls off the bib, but I usually try to keep it on for at least a little while.  

This is her eating a lime at Chili's.  She makes these faces, but then goes back to chew on it some more.  Same with lemons.  I guess she likes sour stuff!

One of the really fun things we started doing this month is play dates with some of my friends at church who have babies very close in age to Kaitlyn.  We've been doing it about once a week and it's great for me to be able to hang out with my friends, bounce ideas and thoughts about life with a baby off them, and Kaitlyn has a good time with her "friends."  They mostly just play side by side, or steal each other's toys, but she seems excited to see them.  Here she is kissing one of the other babies.

Trying to get them to sit near each other and still long enough to take a picture is quite a challenge.  Kaitlyn's shirt in this one says "I have a play date." :)

She's been more consistently going to the nursery at church this month, so she gets to see the same kids twice a week.  She's done great in the nursery for the most part, and our nursery workers (some of which are the friends who are the play date moms) are really great about texting if she is having a hard time.  You can kind of see the side by side play I was talking about here.

This month we had the Fourth of July.  Since Kaitlyn goes to bed so early (usually down by 8), we had my family at our house so we could still hang out with everyone after she was asleep.  I was sure she was going to wake up with all the fireworks, but she slept through everything.  I turned her rain sound up pretty high in her room.

Here she is getting some cucumber from Uncle Ron.

And hanging out with Aunt Sue

My parents

Our family

Kaitlyn loves her Aunt Megan.  She would not stop kissing her.

Speaking of kissing, she's really gotten into the whole kissing thing.  She kisses her baby friends, family, and (as seen below) the mirror.

Hanging out at the park

Visiting Great Grandma EV.  You can see we have a bow in Kaitlyn's hair, it's finally long enough!  Not really long enough to need a bow, but long enough to have something to clip to.

Visiting Great Grandma Rae (my dad's mom we call Mama Rae)

Getting these monthly pictures has gotten more and more challenging.  She wanted nothing to do with sitting still in a chair.  Especially when there was a giant iPhone looking object right behind her.

Finally got one with her looking towards (sort of) the camera and smiling.  You should see the charades we go through during these photo shoots trying to get her to look at us and smile.

We don't know her weight stats because we haven't been to the doctor since her 9 month appointment.  According to our scale she is about 18.5 lbs.  She's wearing 9 month clothes, but still fits in some of her 6 month outfits, especially the dresses.  She's in size 3 diapers and is between a size 2 and 3 in shoes.  The 3's don't always stay on her feet, but the 2's are too hard to get on.

It has been a great summer so far and I've enjoyed being home with her everyday.  Quite a contrast to December when I was so overwhelmed with being alone with her.  It's amazing what good sleep will do.  She goes down around 8 and doesn't get up again until 6 or so, which means I get to sleep, too.  Sleep training was one of the best things we've done!  She takes 2 naps during the day, usually 1 - 2 hours long.  I nurse her when she wakes up in the morning, after each nap, and before she goes to sleep.  My plan is to cut out one of the nap nursings when I go back to work in a month, but I'm not going to make any big changes until I've been back to work for a while.

Kaitlyn's Tenth Month: On the Move

The biggest change this month was Kaitlyn being independently mobile.  Last month she started walking by holding hands, like here with my sister:

But until the day or two after she turned 9 months old, she wasn't really crawling.  She did some army crawling/dragging herself along by her arms, but she wasn't happy about it.  Then all of a sudden, she figured out how to coordinate the legs and arms together and off she went.  She is so much happier now that she can get around on her own and even entertains herself a little bit.  We've had to set up gates and do some other baby proofing stuff around the house.  And since everything still goes in her mouth (dog hair, bits of paper, whatever she comes across), she still has to be watched carefully.  

She discovered the dog dishes and particularly enjoys playing in the water bowl when Mommy doesn't pick it up fast enough.  She loves to empty things: boxes, cupboards, drawers.  It makes it easier to do work in the kitchen because I can open a cupboard and let her empty it.  Her attention span isn't too long, but at least it gives me a few minutes.

Kaitlyn is definitely eating less than she used to, and getting more opinionated about what she is eating.  She loved watermelon, but mangoes are still her favorite.  She prefers to eat finger foods instead of pureed foods for the most part.  So I usually have some finger foods on her tray and sneak bites of pureed food in to make sure she gets enough to eat before she gets bored.  She is very dramatic when she wants to be done eating and throws her head back like the world is ending because she's still sitting in her high chair.  She does sign "all done," but sometimes the drama takes over.

She loves to talk, although she isn't saying any clear words yet.  She'll say "Da" of "Ah-ee" (the vowel sounds for Daddy) for Stephen.  When he was pulling out of the driveway and waving from the car, she started walking (holding my hand) quickly down the driveway saying "Ah-ee, ah-ee."  It was adorable and luckily Stephen was just pulling the car out, so he wasn't actually leaving.  She also says "ih-ee" for Lily (the dog).  I don't think I've heard anything for the cat, but when he meows, she tries to imitate him with a high sing-song sound.  It may be wishful thinking, but it sounds like she says "mama" sometimes.  She'll sing along with you if you are singing, and still dances or "bops" to music (although not as much as last month).

We haven't tried to weigh her this month, but she just entered 9 month clothes and is in size 3 diapers.  She's got 7 teeth now, 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom.  We went through a phase of biting, particularly me on my shoulder.  And not gentle biting, I'm talking chomping down on my shoulder and leaving tiny bite marks.  My loud "ow" and firm "no" didn't seem to make any impact, but she hasn't done it as much in a while.  She has only bit me a couple times nursing, and it was mostly when she first had all the teeth and didn't realize their power.

Something I've enjoyed this month is the cuddles she is all of a sudden giving me.  She was never a cuddled, even as a newborn.  But she has been laying her head on my shoulder more often or will lean her head back when I'm reading to her.  She gives kisses (giant open mouthed ones still) and waves all the time.  In the last day or so she has started pointing with just her pointer finger instead of the whole hand.

Fun things this month:

Dancing with Daddy

Putting with Mommy

First time swimming

Walking at church with Grandma and Grandpa

We went on Kaitlyn's first camping trip this month at Union Valley (off Highway 50).  When people ask how it went, I say the days were great but the nights sucked.  She loves the outdoors, so she was pretty happy most of the time.  She got dirty, but wasn't on the ground that much because she would immediately eat choking sized rocks and sticks.  I wasn't so much worried about the dirt, but I don't want her to choke.  She did eat a fly (that literally flew into her mouth) until I was able to fish it out.

We knew it would be cold at night, we camp every year and have since I was a baby.  So we were prepared.  We were in my parent's old tent trailer (since they got a fancy schmancy new trailer).

We had the pack and play set up where the table usually goes (fits with one of the seats up), blankets stuffed around it and lots of layers on Kaitlyn with a little bear suit with a hood and hand and feet coverings as the final warm layer.  She was adorable.

But she was none too thrilled about having something on her head (she hates wearing hats), especially one she couldn't pull off (she reaches up and pulls forward, which doesn't work with a hood).  And the fact that her hands were covered frustrated her as well.

She napped ok in the tent trailer in the afternoon after we got there.  She fell asleep when I nursed her that night around 7, and stayed asleep until about 9:30.  Then she was up and she was not happy about her hood or her hand coverings. 

I had come prepared for me to be able to nurse her in the middle of the night cold (nursing tank under long sleeves, zip up sweatshirt, beanie, gloves, scarf, and extra blankets to cover as much of myself as possible).  I also thought she might end up in bed with us (there's plenty of space, we make the bed with sheets and blankets).  So when she wouldn't go back to sleep right away, we tried getting in bed with her.  I tried nursing her in bed, hoping she would fall back asleep.  After about 2 hours of crying I was ready to get in the car and go home.

My parents had said if things got bad we should come into their trailer (where there is a heater).  So at 11:30 I knocked on their door.  Once in their trailer where she didn't have to wear the bear suit and was warm, Kaitlyn was happy as a clam.  While I trekked back and forth to our tent trailer getting stuff, she played with my parents on their bed.  We decided to leave Stephen in the tent trailer with our dog since my parents already had their dog in their trailer.

We tried to put Kaitlyn down in the pack and play in my parents' trailer, but she was having none of it by this time.  So I put her in bed with me (on the table bed in their trailer), and tried to nurse her to sleep.  It kind of worked.  She was content, but really only slept 3:30 - 6 or so.

She did take a 2 hour nap after breakfast (and so did I) and the rest of the day was great.  We loaded up the truck and went down to the lake.  For the record, Kaitlyn rode in the cab, Evan was just holding her in the back while my mom took the picture.

We had the beach all to ourselves!

Kaitlyn was not a big fan of the cold water.  She curled her legs up when we tried to dunk her feet in.

But she still had fun on the beach.  And yes, she tried to eat the sand.

She was in the phase of wanting to walk while holding on to other people's hands.  Here she is walking down the road with Megan and Evan.

Playing with the campground sign.

Walking with me and Stephen.

Not long after that picture with me and Stephen, she took a tumble.  She knocked her forehead pretty good and scraped up her nose.  We tried to ice it, but she wasn't a fan of having the ice.  We gave her some tylonel and she was a trooper.

That night my parents actually traded us trailers.  We got their brand new (first time ever taking it camping) trailer with a heater, and they took the old tent trailer.  Just another example of my parents sacrificing for us.  After Friday night, I was thinking we'd pack up and head home after dinner on Saturday because I was not going to have another night like that.

So we were in the warm trailer and had the stove fan on since the sound thing we brought hadn't worked.  She slept a little longer, but still didn't sleep well.  And once she was up, she was ready to play.  She did finally go back to sleep after 3 - 4 hours, so the night was technically better.  And being where it was warm made being awake bearable.

The next day was Father's Day.  We made a big breakfast while the dads relaxed.

Kaitlyn's Father's Day present to Stephen was falling asleep in his arms for the first time in a long time.  She was playing with the string on his sweatshirt while I was finishing the dishes with my mom and fell asleep.

My dad and his girls and grand girl

So like I said, the days were great but the nights sucked.  First order of business is getting the heater in the tent trailer fixed.  Being awake wasn't so bad when it wasn't freezing.  And if it's warm enough, Kaitlyn wouldn't have to have so many layers on.  Having my parents, Megan, and Evan there meant we had a lot of extra help and hands.  I would totally go camping again, but I would have Kaitlyn "practice" sleeping in the pack n play before we left.  I think if I'd had her get used to sleeping in the pack n play in her own room, she would have done better.

And last, but not least, here are her monthly pictures.  These are getting harder and harder to do because she does not want to sit still.