11 months

Nora!

In just one month we will be celebrating your 1st birthday. Can't believe it.

You have been such a fun personality recently. Oh so fun. You are starting to mimic noises, say words, and engage with us on a new level. You make all sorts of silly sounds and love to get our attention. You say "baby" (day-dee) "mama", "dada" (kind of...sounds more like baba), "tasha" (from backyardigans), "thank you" (a few times), and you seem to try to repeat other words, but not super clearly yet. You absolutely love your baby dolls and usually give them big hugs first thing each morning.

You are still an eating champ. You eat pretty much anything as long as you can feed yourself. You do not like any sort of baby food anymore, but eat everything we eat for the most part. You beg for food all the time and probably eat more than your brother does on a daily basis. Oh, and you have now tried peanut butter and eggs as of a couple weeks ago...no problem there. You are still breastfeeding about 4 times a day although you have started drinking milk out of sippy cup too. I am hoping you will be weaned soon, but at the same time enjoying these last few precious moments of nursing/cuddle time we have.

Besides cutting your 8th tooth on our drive to PA this month, you also started working towards walking. You have now taken up to 10 steps (as of today) on your own and want to walk everywhere holding our hands. You love your walkers...oh, you love them. You are also trying to master standing up in the middle of the room. You can stand pretty steady for long periods of time if you aren't paying much attention, but your cautious nature always gets the better of you and you carefully lower yourself to the ground.

You have started sleeping through the night (mostly) now that we are in our new house. We no longer interrupt your sleep at 11pm, so that has seemed to help. You did wake every couple hours last night, but you have been overtired, not napping well, drooling, chewing on your fingers, and being a little more clingy. I think you are working on your molars. Fun times for us all.

You are still such a delight and such a happy easygoing baby. We have really enjoyed seeing you transform into such an independent older baby. You still love to play and keep yourself entertained pretty well. You have such a love for stuffed animals and toys that if we let you hold something at a store, but have to take it away you cry in the most brokenhearted way. For instance, just yesterday, you were holding maracas at the library storytime and when the time came to put them away you lost it. You did not want to give up such a fun toy. You quickly got over it, but it really made us laugh because your brother has never cared for any toy in that way.

Well, this is already overdue, so I'll stop here. Love you more than words can express.

Mama