Happy 10 months to me!

Can you believe that I'm already 10 months old? I remember when I counted my age in weeks, and soon I'll be able to count it in years! Holy cow.

I've learned a lot this past month, and I'm so mobile that my parents had to rearrange the house for me! They changed the guest bedroom into my play room, so now I have a safe place to hang out and practice my crawling. I like to crawl over to the baby gate to watch Cowboy through the grating, and I also like to pull my blocks and books off of the shelf and throw them all over the floor.

I'm very good at pushing myself into a sitting position, and that's given me access to all sorts of things I couldn't reach before! Mama had to take the non-baby-friendly pipe cleaner smiley flowers off of my crib after she found me sitting up and slowly unwrapping them from the crib slats. I've also started pulling myself up on things, and I like to finger walk around the house.

I babble a lot, and I'm quite conversational. If you say bah-bah to me, I usually answer back. Mama thinks that's the neatest thing, but what does she expect? I'm only being polite. She has also realized that I got my voice from Daddy. Or more specifically, the volume of my voice. She thought that I was just babbling along like any other baby until she took me to Gymboree and saw how I easily drown out every other baby (and adult) in the room.

I might be showing some signs of separation anxiety, but it could also be that I'm tired. My naps have been off-kilter for a couple weeks now, and I still don't have it figured out. I'm back to taking three naps a day, but the last nap seems to mess up my bedtime. I get to bed later, and as a result I wake up earlier (don't ask why, but that's how it works). This means that lately I've been waking up at 5 AM. Mama doesn't come to get me until 6 AM, and I spend the entire hour complaining loudly.

I eat a lot of different foods now and I'm done with purees! At first Mama was happy that she doesn't have to spend her evenings pureeing foods for me, but now she's realizing that she has to spend twice as much time cutting my food into tiny little bite-sized pieces. I don't like yogurt, but I love cottage cheese. I prefer Mama's oatmeal to my own (even though she insists that it's the same thing) so now she just makes a bigger portion in her bowl and we share. The only meat I've eaten so far is chicken, but Mama's made me some beef too so I'll be trying that soon. I love eating pasta, especially with my fingers, and I like to chew on bread crusts too. I've also gotten quite good at drinking water from a cup.

I like to feed myself, so Mama makes sure to give me at least one or two servings of finger foods (peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, peaches, bananas, squash, etc.) at every meal. She has to watch my hands, because I'll grab a handful of food and hang on to it with one hand while I feed myself with my other hand. Then I'll forget about my stash and either throw it on the floor or smear it all over my face. Cowboy has learned that he gets to clean up after I'm done with my meal, so he really likes it when I throw things on the floor.

To celebrate my 10-month birthday today, I took Cowboy to Marymoor dog park so that he could play with Bodhi and Reina while I hung out with Madeline and Brady and Mama chatted with their moms, Jen and Dawn. We had a really nice morning enjoying the sun and Cowboy was so happy to have some playtime.

Since then, I've been eating, napping, and crying whenever Mama leaves the room. I hear that she's going to try to put me to bed a little earlier tonight to see if that helps with my sleeping. We'll see...