12 months/ One Year!

Happy Birthday baby girl!  I can't believe it is already your first birthday.  Time has gone by so quickly.  I have loved getting to know you this first year and watching you grow.

You love to babble away in baby jibberish.  No real new words yet, although I think you have a word for kitty and for hello.  I think kitty sounds like tee tee.  And hello sounds like uh whoa because you say it every time you talk on your play phone.

You are so cute when you play now.  You love your dolls and I've seen you share your paci, try to put headbands on them and give them kisses.  You also love putting things inside boxes and reading your books.

You give kisses now, which I think is the most adorable thing in the world.  You lean in and make a mmmm sound.  I feel so special to get kisses from you.  You also can clap your hands now.

You have 3 new teeth.  Your two front teeth came in and you got another bottom tooth making a total of 5 teeth.  You have two more on top that are in the process of coming down and I think the other bottom tooth will come through soon too.

Another big accomplishment is that you can stand all by yourself, but you don't want to do it.  I saw you do it by accident the other day because you were distracted by holding a toy with both hands.  Then later that day I stood you up in your room and let go.  You stayed standing for a few seconds and then sat down.  I haven't been able to get you to do it again though.

You like to walk by pushing the computer chair around.  You will also walk if we hold your hands, but you're not ready to try it on your own quite yet.

I may add to this later, but I really wanted to get it posted on your actual birthday.  I will definitely add some pictures, but I don't have time right now.

I love you so much baby girl and had a great time celebrating your birthday.  Can't wait for your parties!  Those will be a separate post.

**Adding a photo of you on your birthday with your present from mommy and daddy, which you loved!

11 months

Wow baby girl, you are almost one year old!  Party planning is in progress.  And we have an awesome birthday present for you that I can't wait to give you.

You are now an expert furniture cruiser.  You haven't made any attempts to stand alone or walk and it may be awhile because you are an extremely cautious little girl.  When you get down from standing you slowly inch your way down until your butt reaches the floor.

You haven't really added any new words yet, but you did try to say ball once by saying ba and you made a kkk sound for kitty.  Also daddy said you were putting your shirt over your face and saying boo when you pulled it down.  You like to click your tongue and you have also discovered the fun of screaming.  We were home the other night and you were having a great time screaming, but I wanted you to be quiet because it was almost bedtime and I wanted you to calm down.  So I whispered, "shhhhh baby, use your quiet voice" and you responded by whispering "ahhhhhh".  It was very funny and shows just how smart you are.

You are working on at least two of your top teeth right now and you're having a really tough time with it.  I hate seeing you so miserable!  I think they finally started to break through, so hopefully you'll start feeling better.

You had your very first trip to Disneyland with all your cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma and papa, mommy and daddy.  You had a great time although you weren't too sure about some of the rides we took you on.  You were liked the characters, but only from a comfortable distance.  I think your favorite part about the whole trip was the hotel room.  You really liked crawling around and exploring everything in the room.

Well, I was only one day late this time and I did actually start writing this yesterday.  It would have been on time if I had finished it.  Next month will be the big first birthday post!

Love you baby girl!

I need something more

I love being a mom, but that's not all I want to be.  I feel like I've lost myself since becoming a mom and I want to change that.  I no longer do photography, unless you count snapping pictures of my baby.  I also haven't danced in years!

So I decided I need a hobby.  While I would love to get back into photography, at the moment I feel I need something new and exciting.  Some kind of artistic outlet that allows me to express my creative side.  I want to be crafty.  I started to look up some projects to work on for Raeya's room and I am very excited about them.

We'll see how it goes, but if I'm successful, I'll post some pictures.  If not, I guess I'll have to find some other way to express myself.  It just feels good to put it down in writing so hopefully I'll be more likely to make it happen.

10 Months

Sorry baby girl, I am late yet again with your post.  I blame it on the holidays.  Anyway, it was another exciting month.  You finally mastered real crawling and with that discovered the fun game of chase the cat.  You're not fast enough to catch the cat, but you laugh with delight each time you get close.  You also love to crawl around with an object in your mouth and in the spirit of Christmas, an ornament was one of the chosen objects.

You learned how to pull yourself up on furniture to stand and love going up and down.  You have also started to cruise the furniture a little bit.  Whenever I go to get you out of the crib now, you are almost always standing up waiting for me.

You are eating a lot more food now.  You really like puffs, cheerios and yogurt.  You also eat shredded carrots, cheese and apples and you eat peas too.

You still only have two real words, mama and dada, but you love to chatter away in your baby jibberish.  Mama seems to be your favorite word right now which is nice except I do occasionally need a break from your cuteness.

Okay baby girl, I need to finally post this thing since it has been sitting here for over a week.  I love you to the moon and back!

9 months

Well baby girl, you are now 9 months old.  I thought I was going to have to say that we're still waiting for you to do real crawling, but you finally did it today!  You got up on your hands, one knee and then used your foot on the other leg to push.  It was really cute and I got so excited that I just about threw you a party.  You were quite proud of yourself and so was I.  Of course I don't know when you'll do it again, but hey, you did it!

Your other big accomplishment over the past month was learning how to go from laying on your stomach to sitting up all by yourself.  You are a pro at that now and do it all the time.  Although you did have a few face plants during the learning process, you managed to keep trying and figured it out.

You love to talk and have so many sounds now that it seems like you have your own baby language.  You can say mama and dada and you know what they mean.  Dada is a happy word for you; I guess you think he's the fun one.  You usually say mama in a distressed voice when you want to be picked up or rescued from whatever horrible thing is going on that you think you need rescuing from.  I still like hearing it though.

You love to eat just about any kind of pureed baby food, but you don't like anything thicker or textured.  You stick your tongue out and gag, so we need to work on that.  You can pick things up and put them in your mouth, you just don't like to eat anything firm enough to pick up.  Unless it's paper!  Also, you have two teeth now, so you should put them to use.  By the way, it's almost impossible to get pictures of those teeth.  This is what we resorted to in trying:

And it still didn't really turn out.

You love taking baths and have been playing with your washcloths, so we decided it was time to get you some bath toys.  I picked out a really cool fish toy for the bath that I thought you would like and I was right.  You did not want to let go of that toy even after your bath was finished.

You are such a happy girl and I love that I get to spend my days with you.  Happy 9 months baby girl, I can't wait to see what the next month brings.

8 months

Mommy is so behind.  You have been 8 months since the 22nd and I am just now getting around to writing your update.  You are so close to crawling that we keep expecting you to do it any day now.  You get up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth like you're winding up to go.  However, when you do go, you just flop forward and crawl around on your stomach.

One of your favorite activities right now is to tip over the recycling box and go through all the papers and cardboard.  You love paper and there's always something new in that box every time you tip it over.  I let you play until you start eating the paper, then I have to take it away.  I'm sorry, but you really can't eat paper.

Your favorite toys are the rubber beaded teethers.  You have three different ones and love them all.  You almost always have one in your hand and you take them everywhere with you.  You hold on tight to them and won't let go.  When trying to change your clothes, I have learned to get you to switch hands because it is almost impossible to pry one from your hand.

Right now your favorite food seems to be pears.  You also like sweet potatoes and peaches.  You did not like squash!  You also love to drink water from mommy's cups.

You had your first trip to the pumpkin patch and you had so much fun.  You were looking all over the place at the people and the pumpkins.  It was so fun to see you enjoying it all.

We moved you into your own room and you are sleeping much better now.  I only have to nurse you once or twice instead of 5 times!  I miss having you in the room with me, but I do enjoy the extra sleep.

I love you so much baby girl and will try to do better at keeping up with documenting all your achievements.

*I forgot to mention that you have your first tooth now =)

My monster baby

I just had to share this video because it is way too funny to keep to myself.