10 Months

I can’t believe Abby will be a year old in just a couple of months. Where has this year gone? There are days when I can’t wait until she’s a little older because taking her places like the Apple Festival will be so much more fun, but I’m not ready for her to grow up yet! We weighed and attempted to measure her last night. She’s now 21lbs. and 31 inches long (maybe). She’s gotten so squirmy lately that measuring her has become very difficult.

Abby has always been a mover. Even when she was a newborn, her arms and legs were constantly going, even in her sleep. Swaddling her just made her angry because she wanted to be free. A few months ago, she discovered the diaper caddy that sits by her head on the changing table. Ever since, she has to twist to get to a diaper before she’ll settle down to let me change her. A couple of weeks ago, though, that suddenly wasn’t enough. Now she twists until she’s on all fours, then tries to use the wipe warmer (on top of the caddy) to stand up. I’ve tried giving her small toys to play with to keep her occupied, but that only worked for so long. The last couple of days, she’s finally settled back down to her previous amount of squirminess, so it’s become easier to change her as long as I do it quickly.

Bath time has become much more interesting too. She recently discovered that there’s a whole world of faucets and knobs she was missing out on by just sitting there playing with the same toys over and over. Now, as soon as we get her in the tub, she stands up to grab whatever she can. As soon as Damon lays her down on our bathroom counter to dry her off, she twists around to better grab anything within reach. She likes to use the mirror to stand on too. Getting her dressed after her bath has become a two-person job.

With all this standing that she’s doing, Abby’s become quite the furniture cruiser too. She can really move! Since Sunday, though, we are now on full Abby Walk Alert! She was cruising along the end table, and something about her stance told me that she would try to walk. Sure enough, I put my hands just out of reach and she let go of the table and took a couple tiny steps toward me! Ever since then, I try whenever she’s standing and most of the time she’ll take 2-3 steps before diving into my arms. A couple of times she’s tried it on her own. Last night while I was upstairs getting her bath ready, Damon said he looked over to her and she was walking toward him from the ottoman!

Apparently, Abby’s new motor skills make her hungry. She’s still a great eater, although she does definitely have preferences now. If it were up to her, she’d live solely on fruits, plums and grapes among some new favorites, but bananas are still the best. She can easily eat a dozen grapes in one sitting. For breakfast, she usually eats a whole banana and a waffle. Most mornings, she has the banana mostly eaten by the time the waffle’s ready! She definitely prefers fruits over vegetables. One vegetable I was surprised to find that she loves is edamame (soy beans). I’d never had them before, so I bought a bag one day for Abby and me to share. I couldn’t shell them fast enough for her! She also loves peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes (thanks for the fry recipe Rachael!), and squash. She’ll eat green beans and carrots, but she doesn’t seem to like them all that much because she spends more time playing with them than eating them. One of her absolute favorite non-fruity foods is string cheese. She also loves these little ravioli dinners by Gerber. Last night, she’d eaten all of her ravioli before we were anywhere near done with our dinner.

Abby is also “talking” all the time now. “Babababa” is still the most used word in her vocabulary, but she now also says “dada!” She doesn’t know what it means because she doesn’t actually call Damon “dada,” but it’s still great to hear. She also loves to give us hugs and kisses. When we’re on the floor with her, she’ll climb all over us and sometimes she’ll wrap her arms around our necks and lay there for a few seconds before she resumes her attack. Her kisses are slobbery, open-mouthed kisses, and she sometimes bites us, but we can’t get enough of them. We’ll take all the hugs and kisses we can get because before we know it, she’ll be too cool for that sort of thing anymore. When that day comes, we’ll at least have great memories of all the love she shows us now.