Birthday Bonanza

She's 11 months old today. The countdown to 1 year begins now. Only four short weeks left to go.

The house is filled with birthday fever. It's Greta's 11 month birthday and Ben's actual-factual birthday. Even though I know that eventually we'll stop measuring Greta's age in months, it's still going to be fun that when his birthday rolls around each year, it will always mean that her birthday is coming up.

Today I'm feeling very melancholy about her impending birthday, though. I just want to hold on to her precious babyhood forever. This is such a fun age. I can't even describe what makes it so fun, which I suppose means that it's nothing but the sweetness of being a parent. Am I exhausted? Yes. Am I overwhelmed by how much I love our family? YES.

A few random updates:

1. Greta has:

• a weight of 17.5 lbs
• a head circumference of 17.5 inches
• a length of 27.25 inches

2. She's wearing #3 diapers during the day (to use them up) and #4 diapers at night.

3. She still prefers purees over other solids. Now that I am part-time, she gets about 4 oz of milk in a bottle while I'm out and then nurses frequently when I am home. She eats three solid meals a day and usually has some formula before bed and when she practices with a sippy cup. Favorite foods include yogurt, pancakes, Cheerios, and various baby foods.

4. Recently, when she pulls to standing and lifts her hands to show that she can stand without support (for a few seconds), she has been doing the most adorable thing where she holds her hands in front of her, turns them back and forth, does the "SQUEE!" face in amazement at the fact that she's standing without support.

5. She is getting better at knowing how to fall safely and how to lower herself down carefully. I always assumed she'd be a late walker, but now I'm thinking she might start earlier than I'd expected.

Update! Update!

Just now, I was sitting on the floor with Greta playing with some blocks. Our favorite game is when an adult builds a tower and Greta knocks it over. Sometimes she swats at it very deliberately and "scorches the earth" afterwards -- shoving the fallen blocks to the sides so that it is even more difficult for us to re-build. Other times, it has seemed as though she just simply was reaching for a block that happened to be in the middle of the tower and the falling tower was merely incidental.

This evening, though, after she knocked over a stack of my blocks, she picked one up and put it on top of the other. When she took her hand off the top one, she drew her hand back to her chest and made a "SQUEE!" face at me, so happy with her handiwork. She did this for the next several minutes -- placing one block on top of the other and carefully removing her hand, often leaving a fingertip on the top block until the very last moment. Sometimes the top block knocked over as she moved her hand, and some times she was able to keep them balanced. I praised her effort in both instances, but she was clearly more pleased with herself when she got them to balance. Intrinsic motivation for the win!

We love you, Greta Girl! Happy Birthday to Ben and the Gretstar!

10 and 3/4-ish Month Update

So there's a lot that's been going on. A lot.

Greta's First Christmas

I got pneumonia over the holidays and missed the first two days of school after break.
Then the "polar vortex" started in just as I was wrapping up my work at my old job. (Oh right -- I changed jobs). So my last few weeks were incredibly rushed, since I had even less time to wrap up than usual.
Then Ben got sick the week during my last week at my old job.
Then on Greta's 10 month birthday and my last day at my old job, Ben and I both started throwing up. I got better pretty fast, but Ben couldn't keep anything down for several days. This was, keep in mind, the weekend that I was transitioning from one teaching job to another. If I had been staying at my old job, it would have been the week before a 2 week vacation. Instead, it was an insane transitional time in which I was finishing up grades, cleaning out my old classroom, and setting up my new classroom and meeting my new students.
Then we had another round of polar vortex weather and school was cancelled for three more days.
Then last week, I finally had a full 5 day week with my new students.
Ben still has pneumonia.

So I haven't updated in a long time, but I don't want to wait until 11 months to write an update. Why? Because she is changing so fast I can't even believe it. It's like I have a new baby every week.

Where do I even start?

Greta has Teeth

Good luck trying to get a photo of her teeth. This was the best I could do. You can barely see a tooth on the bottom -- just don't confuse it with the thing that's at the top left . . . that's a cheerio. 

Her first tooth popped out on New Year's morning! I was feverish with pneumonia (didn't know it at the time -- I went to the doctor later that day) and Ben was exhausted and lying on the couch at Casey and Brandon's house. All of a sudden, I looked in her mouth and saw a white thing. When I felt it, it felt razor sharp! It was so surprising and sudden. She hadn't even been behaving strangely the day before or anything. I always thought that the worst part of teething would come right as a tooth was breaking through, but Greta has been "teething" for months and the times when she is actually cutting a tooth haven't seemed much more intense than the other times she has seemed to have teething pain along the way.

Yes, I say times (plural) because she has three teeth now! The first one to come through was her bottom left front tooth. Then her bottom right front tooth. Now her top left front tooth cut through yesterday and the right top front tooth isn't far behind it. It's exciting to see! I love her toothy-toothless grin!

Greta is Crawling

She started crawling the week before she turned 10 months old. She has been "army crawling" for awhile, but then she started crawling on her hands and knees -- with her tummy above the floor. It's fun to watch -- such a "classic baby" move. She is definitely louder and more vocal when she crawls that way, although if she's on carpet and has a pacifier in her mouth, she's almost as stealthy as when she army crawls.

Greta is Pulling Up

She started pulling up shortly after she started crawling -- I'd say maybe within the first few days after turning 10 months. At first, it started with her pulling/pushing up on me while I was video-taping her. All of a sudden, I noticed that she was standing. I had a hand under her armpit for balance, but she'd basically gotten herself into a standing position on her own. A few days later, she'd pulled up on the sides of her playpen.

Since then, she pulls herself to standing anytime she can. Furniture, people, playpen . . . basically everything in her world is just a prop for pulling up. She sometimes makes poor choices -- for example, we have to be careful when she tries to pull up on furniture that swivels or the handle to the drawer of the oven. We recently bought her convertible car seats that she will be transitioning into soon and she had to be monitored closely when they were unboxed on the floor of the living room -- uninstalled car seats make for dangerously unstable pull-up devices.

Greta is Cruising

She doesn't cruise a ton. She mostly cruises along the sides of her playpen. Few furniture pieces are the right height (remember, she's under the 10th percentile for height) and the right distance from each other, so there isn't a great way to get around the house by cruising. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to put her in her playpen and see her pull up and begin a circuit around her playpen, chatting away at the outside world as she does so.

Greta is Standing

Just for a couple seconds at a time, but she's definitely doing the "Look Mama! no hands!" thing. She will push up off of me until she is kind of in a "downward dog" yoga position. Then she will straighten herself upright and look super proud and adorable before she loses her balance and falls back down again. It's awesome!

Greta is Interactive

Okay, so she's always been interactive. But it's just . . . different now. It's like being around a totally new person in the last few weeks. For example, she has totally become a bath fanatic in the last couple months. She loves bathtime,  splashes gleefully and is sad when she has to get out of the tub.

If you put out cheerios on her high chair tray, she has started experimenting with what will happen when she hits the tray, pushes the cheerios around, kicks against the end of the tray, surreptitiously extends her arm with a cheerio in her grip and then lets the cheerio fall to the floor. She enjoys pushing down on the edge of a cheerio with her finger and watching it catapult across the dining room in the opposite direction. Her favorite has to be when you point to a cheerio and then open your mouth wide. She laughs, picks up the cheerio you selected and offers it to you for you to nibble from her fingers. The best, though, is when she does the "fake out." She offers it, but then witholds it at the last moment, just as you're about to gobble it up from her fingers. The maniacal laughing as she does it is hilarious, but also a little concerning.

She is also very destructive. If you create a tower of blocks, for example, she will come over from across the playpen and, with great determination, knock down your blocks. Not only that, but she will enthusiastically hit at the blocks, spreading them as far apart from one another as possible, so that it is clear that there is no longer any organization or structure to the blocks as a group. She seems to take this work very seriously -- so seriously, in fact, that I've started to wonder whether she has a "No Building!" rule that she feels she is constantly (*dramatic sigh*) having to enforce with us.

She's also started to mimic us. For example, Ben has been having to use an inhaler for his pneumonia. When he does, she looks at him with great interest and waits as he holds his breath after inhaling. Then she scrunches up her face and makes an exaggerated "sniff."

Greta is Eating More "People Food" -- Slowly but Surely

Despite being nearly a year old, Greta still balks at most "big kid" foods. She just never really latched onto the idea of finger foods. She loves Cheerios and puff snacks, but rejected cut up avocado or banana. We've been most successful with small pieces of bread products -- for example, if we go to a restaurant, we'll give her small pieces of bread or scrape the salt off the crackers and let her try those. Recently, we tried giving her strips of toast with a thin smear of almond butter and that was fairly successful, although messy.

As far as spoon foods, she still loves all her typical baby food purees. Everyone told us that the pureed stage wouldn't last long, but our kiddo seems to be an exception. We have also started introducing some homemade purees and other soft foods. For example, we've given her cassoulet (including some shredded chicken, but excluding the sausage and bacon . . . seemed to love it the first day, but very fussy the second day), a few different soups (in the last week, golden potage and red lentil mulligatawny . . . pretty successful), and lasagna (not a hit). We're still working on trying to get her gradually more interested in a greater variety of foods. But she's growing and gaining, so we're also not really worried about it.

Greta eating cassoulet -- her first "big people" meal.

Greta has New Carseats

As mentioned earlier, we bought convertible carseats for Greta. She hasn't totally outgrown her infant seat, but she's getting close, so we decided to bite the bullet and buy her seats while there was a good deal.

Britax Roundabout -- Cybex Aton 2 -- Chicco Nextfit

On the left is the Britax Roundabout G4 which she will ride in when she's in her grandparents' car or when we are traveling.

On the right is the Chicco Nextfit, which she will ride in when she's in our car.

In the middle is her infant seat (Cybex Aton 2) for comparison. Doesn't the infant seat look tiny? Neither of the convertibles look huge until you look at them next to her infant seat.

Greta has More Hair

Enough said. Look at this adorable bed head during breakfast!