10 Months

It has been almost a full 4 months since I last blogged, and I think its about time. Life has been good, busy, exhausting, frustrating at times but mostly beautiful and good. Ella is almost 10 months old now. She started crawling right at 6 months was able to stand herself up without help from objects or people at about 8 months and took her first steps just after her 9 month birthday. She has 2 teeth which she cut around 6 months and is working on 2 more at the moment.

She waves hello and goodbye(usually after the fact), blows kisses, gives lots of hugs and sometimes lots of kisses, can do "so big", and sign milk. She loves to explore, loves animals(but only real ones not the stuffed toy kind shes afraid of those), and loves to make us laugh. She like music and loves to dance, we play Pandora on the TV and watching her bounce and move to the music is great. She also loves water, you can't keep her away from it whether it is the bathtub which she makes her way to as soon as she hears the water running, the fish pond outside or the dog dish. She started swimming lessons 3 weeks ago with Daddy and seems to be enjoying them so far.

She loves to be outside, to play in the grass and dirt and to chase the chickens and the duck(or it might be the other way around. She can point out lights/ceiling fans to us when we ask her where the lights are. She tries to imitate words, specifically bird, duck and chicken(it's quite amusing when she tries to say chicken at this point). I see my little baby girl morphing into a Toddler with preferences and quirks and opinions and I am enjoying seeing the person she is becoming.

That's a little bit about Ella, as for how things are going I certainly can't complain most days. I have a pretty laid back approach to parenting for the most part and try to go with the flow a lot of times. There are certainly days when I feel like I can't deal with it anymore or feel the need to at least manage to get a sink full of dishes done, but I try to remind myself that this is only temporary and I know that while my messy house may drive me crazy some times I won't ever regret the time I have spent with my daughter, even when for the 50th time that day I'm taking her out of the dog bed and telling her she has to be nice to the puppies.

We are still nursing strong along with solids offered whenever Daron and I eat. We took the Baby Led Weaning approach to solid food and skipped purees as well as rice cereal. We started with soft cooked carrot stick, avocado fingers and banana fingers. She now can handle pretty much anything we are eating(within reason of course). She has had pork chops, chicken drum sticks, sweet corn on the cob, toast fingers and occasionally part of a bagel with cream cheese, she particularly enjoys scrambled eggs, and has had french toast, pancakes and many other things. The other day she tried raw snap peas and loved them. She figured out how to drink from her straw cup right around 7 months.

We are still Co-sleeping/bed-sharing which is a personal choice for us and something we enjoy very much the majority of the time. We have our mattress on the floor at the moment and she just learned how to get in and out on her own. She still sleeps 10-12 hours at night with anywhere between 1 and 4 nursing sessions depending on a variety of factors and just recently cut down to 2 naps a day instead of 3.

We are baby-proofing as we go and have found that for us other than major safety issues not a lot has been needed. We try to keep things we don't want her to have/dangerous items out of her reach and of course have safety outlets, cords hidden, and a lock on the cupboard under our sink(though I am 95% chemical free cleaning wise). We haven't found our wood floors to be an issue. She did take a couple backwards tumbles when she was learning to stand but no major injuries. When she was learning to crawl, roll, and transition she quickly learned to be gentle with her head on the floor and again not even any big bumps during the learning process.

Also through personal preference we have not used an exersaucer and have so far decided not used a play pen or similar. Other than closing off rooms she gets free exploration of the house within reason and if I need to get something done where I wouldn't be able to keep an eye on her I wear her. So far this has been working well for us but we are constantly changing and evolving our routine etc. as she grows and changes.

For all its challenges and frustrations I am so far incredibly enjoying this thing called parenting. Now since Ella is awake from her oddly long afternoon nap, it looks like I need to retrieve her from the dog bed once again. I think we might go outside soon, it takes her longer to make her way to the chicken coop.