11 months

***Note: for some reason this didn't post and I actually wrote it right on time too. Oops...so here is a month old update.

Amelia AKA Mia OR Millie-Monster, Millie-Billie, A-milli-A, Ameli-O is officially 11 month old!

She gave me kisses today. Big, wet, open mouth slobbery ones. She's given me kisses before, but it was hard to tell if she truly meant it or rather her mouth just slammed into my face. But today, they were real. And it was sweet.

I swear everyday she does something new. She's racking up a list of awesome skillz. Some of which include:

- pointing!
- waving ALL the time.
- cruising. She's gotten really good at this. She's fast. And can walk with just barely holding on to the coffee table or couch.
- pushing! She can push her toy walker like nobody's business. And the laundry basket too. That's pretty fun.
- standing! This is really cool. She started a couple weeks ago and we enthusiastically cheered and clapped every time. And now she does it nonchalantly like its no big deal. But she can't just standup all on her own. We're working on that.
- paying attention to books for more than 5 secs. She loves touchy feely books and her small dr. Seuss books from Auntie Chey.
- babbling. She can make so many different sounds now, I couldn't even list them all. She is great at mimicking our tones. She still likes to say MAMAMMAMAA the most. But I'm pretty confident she knows and can say uh-oh. And shes finally figuring out Dada. She also knows words like milk and all done. Today we were reading a book with a doggie and she pointed at Lily and tried to say doggie. It was a proud moment.
- grinding her teeth. Oh, it's so awful. Her top tooth is coming in and she keeps grinding it against the bottom tooth. It's painful to hear.
- feeding the dog. Yep, she likes to give her snacks to Lily.

She is still a great eater. We haven't found a food that she dislikes. The past month or so we've been supplementing with formula since my supply has gotten low. She totally loves it. After Spring Break I stopped pumping at school since it wasn't really worth it anymore and so she gets formula doing the day and breastfed morning and night. I had hoped to make it just one more month completely breastfeeding - but it just didn't work out that way. In another month we will start introducing whole milk. That'll be so nice and easy!

Other baby things you are dying to know about:

- She normally wakes up around 8am. And goes to bed around 7:30pm.
- She takes one long (1.5-2hr) morning nap and only sometimes will take an afternoon nap.
- She fits in 6-9month clothes, 9month fits the best. I think some 12mo clothes/dresses fit too.
- She likes sippy cups - the ones with the handle. But she's learning to not use a handle. Big kid stuff, I tell you.
- Her eyes are staying an awesome blue-green-hazel color.
- Still no FREAKING hair!! The longish wisps in the back are a sandy blond color, so we'll see if that EVER?!?! fills in?
- Favorite foods: avocados, bananas, mandarin oranges, puffs/Cheerios, bread (with purées), and basically anything you put in front of her.

We are looking forward to her 1st birthday party. Hopefully she will have all her close family visiting.

And here is a bunch of cute photos from the past month. (I hardly ever have time to grab our DSLR, so most are from my iPhone.)

 

 

Links to months 9-10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, and 3, 2, and 1.

 

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9 months...10 months?!

The months keep rolling on by...in fact I swear month 9 happened in just one week. Our little Mia baby is 10 months today...now just 2 months away from a year old!

As soon as Amelia turned 9 months she really got the hang of crawling. The girl is fast now! She can get from the couch to the dog bowl in no time. It keeps us on our toes, but we don't really mind because its fun watching her explore. She's quick to pull up on anything. Dan has even caught her standing for just a second or two all on her own. She can somewhat cruise and move from the couch to the table, etc. She'll cruise down the couch as well. But she's still pretty content with just standing, sitting and crawling. We'll see if she figures out walking before her first birthday. We're in no rush.... :)

At her 9 month appointment she finally hit the 20th percentile for weight - wahoo! What a chunk. :) And she's still a little on the short side too. I think that is what makes her look so petite. Because the girl definitely has some chubby thighs. The fat over her knee caps is pretty precious.

And she can eat!!! She never refuses food. She'll eat anything. We are trying to give her lots of healthy finger foods, because she prefers feeding herself over us giving her purées. It's difficult to be creative and healthy in the choices we give her. I'm pretty sure she would eat a whole loaf of bread if we let her...or a giant jar of mandarin oranges. I think she swallows those things whole!

Of course we are still enjoying lots of sleep around here. We truly are blessed with a good sleeper. She takes about 2 naps a day. Dan has her on a good schedule while I am at work. When she was teething (she has 2 bottom teeth!), she hardly complained at all but she would wake sometimes just for a few minutes to cry and then go back to sleep. Not so bad. However, lately the weekends are a little rough because all she wants to do is be held by me. I'm not sure if its because she misses me during the week or if she has been teething this past week. Either way she is definitely in the attachment phase. Hopefully, it'll pass soon.

It's really fun to play with her now. She laughs and giggles and crawls all around. I love how she says MAMAMAMAMAMAAAA when she wants something. And BABABABABAAPP when she's being silly and wants to talk. No DAAADAAS yet, but she does imitate other sounds that we make, just not totally coherently. More like the fluctuations of our voice. We are tying to teach her to clap and I've been playing patty-cake with her.

And last...STILL NO HAIR! Actually, it's a little longer in the back. But it's just not growing. Poor bald kid. I'm trying to put more headbands on her to change it up a bit. I just can't imagine her with hair anyways...I'm really curious what it'll look like once it does come in?

Links to months 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, and 3, 2, and 1.

 

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Guaranteed to make you miss summer:

I spent most of the day organizing my electronics and uploading some photos. Mostly because I have 1,029 pictures of Amelia on my iphone. Oops! 

And then I found these...

The San Juan Islands

Most beautiful place on earth. For realz.

These are the pre-Amelia days. Two summers ago, we stared out at this beautiful little lake for an entire week. 

We hiked.

We saw endless vistas of blue water and snow capped mountains.

We rode bikes.

We cooked with my new dutch oven.

We spent endless hours on the tree swing. 

We fished.

We sat by the campfire.

One of the best summers (well, you know...until Amelia came and changed the whole definition of best summer ever).

So enjoy these seventeen photos and try not to miss summer too much (and if you do, don't fret...summer will eventually be on it's way!)

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Visiting Family

Here is a stream of cell phone photos from our long weekend trip to Southern California. We all had such a great time visiting with each other and enjoying the warm sunshine. It was so fun to see Baby Jude and Baby Amelia play together. I loved it.

It was Amelia's first trip on a plane and she did AMAZING. I'll take her anywhere. Although, the trip was only 2 hrs and I could see how if it was any longer, it would have been a bit more challenging.

Now we cant wait for our cousins, Natalie and David to come visit us here in Oregon! :)

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8 awesome months

I've been trying to write this post for about 3 weeks. We never got a good 8 month photo session in. Its too dark by the time I get home, and we are too busy on the weekends. So I included some cell phone pics, cause everyone knows I have about 1000 of those!

So here goes....

Big news: Amelia is 8 months and on the MOVE!

I remember loving the 5-6 month old mark because Amelia was leaning so many new things, but now I'm pretty sure 8-9 months has been the best.

Here's what we've been doing:

- eating EVERYTHING. She's tiny, but she loves to eat. She can down a 4oz squeezey pack of food in under 2 minutes. She LOVES any finger food. She'll still eat puréed food, but has more fun eating peas and diced veggies, beans or slightly mashed soft foods. She snacks on puffs, creamies, yogis and Cheerios too. Most days she'll eat solids 3x/day along with her milk too. We're glad that she loves food!

-crawling!!!!! Okay, well her own version of it. About 1 month ago, she started pulling herself around, army crawl style. And gradually, she started to get better at it. She still doesn't take a lot of "on all fours" steps. She does a combo of sitting, scooting, pulling, crawling, one leg crawling, rolling....whatever it takes. She's not going super far distances, but she definitely can get across a small space if she wants something. This part has been the funniest to watch.

- standing! She can pull up on most things. Problem is...she's too short to reach the tops of most things. :) If she does get up she can balance for quite awhile too. And she is just barely experimenting with trying to take steps and cruise. Shes nowhere close to it yet, but i can tell shes starting to think about it. I've also found her multiple times standing up in her crib....and it terrifies me. Will she fall out? Someone help me not go crazy about this....

-talking! Just kidding! :) She's basically just figured out MAMAMAMMAMMAMAAAAAAA. It's pretty awesome though. She mimics our "hi" and "hello" sounds too. And we can get her to wave goodbye or hello with her arm sometimes, if we're lucky. It's totally precious and it makes me want to squeeze her because its so darn smart of her. But she mostly does it for Dan. He gets the most smiles and giggles around her too....

-still no teeth (edit: right after I wrote this, her first tooth popped through! YAYA!)
-still no hair.

Other than those big things, we are just enjoying growing up over here. There are still lots of smiles and gummy grins. We are so blessed to have such a happy little one.

Now we can't wait for summertime and sunshine so we can go play outside. Can't wait for all that fun...

Links to months 7, 6, 5, 4, and 3, 2, and 1.

 

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The best head-laying moment that has ever existed

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I've been cherishing every single moment with my girl lately. The moments are getting sweeter and sweeter. Lately, Amelia has decided to not fall right asleep as I nurse and rock her each night. Instead, she picks up her little head, sticks her thumb in her mouth and then gently lays her head on my chest.
The amount of love I feel in that moment is intense.
Sometimes she lifts her sweet self up and looks right into my eyes. We stare at each other in that quiet darkness. Quite often I can see a quick, gummy little grin, thumb still in her mouth, and a small glint in her eye.....then it's back to the best head-laying moment that has ever existed.

(sigh...)


I read this blog post this morning about getting in the picture and how fast motherhood flies by. I feel like I'm on a bullet train. I'm desperately clinging on to so many wonderful moments. I've decided that I need to write more of them down, even the small little ones. I really enjoy looking back, reflecting and remembering what's important in life.

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