11 Months Old!

One month ago we were flying home from Charlottesville.

One month from now I'll be cleaning the house before Evie's birthday party.
SOB.

Happy 11 months, Evie Bea!

Here is a link to her previous monthly diaper photos, and here are the best shots from today:

And her interview:

Today, Evie is 21 pounds (57th percentile) and 29 inches (56th percentile).

Eating: Evie is still drinking formula (she prefers it cold now) before naps, at bedtime and for a midnight feeding. However, she weaned herself from bottles when her first top tooth came in, and now drinks it from juice boxes. She is also drinking whole milk with her meals and eating mostly table food. We still offer a few purees, but mostly just to use up our freezer stash of them. Her favorites are blueberries, yogurt, waffles, banana, peas, cheese, black olives, beans (all kinds), rice (she only likes it with some salt-free spice or flavoring mixed in, like Spanish rice, Mexican rice, risotto, etc.), mac and cheese, pasta (with some flavor or sauce), almost any fruit and any sweets she gets to try (like ice cream, sorbet, the chocolate chip cookie someone fed her at church last Sunday...). She also had some junk food (Five Guys) on our trip to Virginia, and seems to love french fries as much as her mother does.
Here she is, eating blackberries:

Sleeping: Evie sleeps about 12-13 hours at night, with one waking to eat, usually around midnight. She takes one or two naps each day, depending on whether I'm dragging her around town to activities and on errands during her morning nap. Her naps are much better than in the past. Occasionally they are still 30-40 minutes, but more often last over an hour. She also goes to sleep more easily and stays asleep through household noises much more often. Our bedtime routine is bath, lotion, books, formula, pacifier and lights out. We lay her in her crib still awake and she goes to sleep on her own. For awhile we were doing white noise and/or lullabies on her i*Pod, but we aren't using either anymore. I snuck into her room during her afternoon nap today to get this picture. Thank goodness I didn't wake her. It was quite risky:

Gross motor skills: This was a big month, since Evie learned to walk! I won't go into it, since I've already posted about it. Her latest tricks are standing up from sitting without pulling up on something, and walking up to an object, stooping to pick it up, standing up again and toddling around holding it. She seems to understand that carrying something around is quite the skill, because she loves to toddle around holding random objects. At least, if there is a purpose to carrying them from one room to the next, I haven't figured it out yet. She is also a climber. Actually, climbing is hands-down her favorite thing to do these days. If she sees a platform or a set of stairs, she is obsessed with getting to them and climbing them. We still have to help her climb back down, unfortunately, so we try to limit the amount of time she spends climbing. Sorry, Evie. She likes to climb through things as well, like climbing through chair rungs, through the bottom shelf of our kitchen island and through and empty shelf in the library. We haven't spent as much time on our screened porch this month because she is obsessed with climbing through the dog doors, and we haven't found a good way to distract her (for a variety of reasons, including the way they are installed and Apollo's insistence on freedom to come and go, it doesn't work to blockade them).

Fine motor skills: Evie first pointed when she was 9 months old (at a globe), but didn't generalize the skill until this month. Now she points all the time, and I love it! It makes talking to her so much more fun because it feels like a conversation to tell her the names of the things she points at. Her favorite things to point at are pictures in books and pictures on walls. Evie also started using baby signs this month and can inconsistently sign "more" and "all done," as well as wave "hi" and "bye bye" (which was a 9 month skill). She can also clap, "give me 5" and is learning to do "soooo big." Her pincer grasp is excellent, and she can pincer slimy banana and avocado now, which was difficult at first.

Verbal skills: Evie's first word was "Mama" at 9 months and this month added "mum mum" for any food or drink. She says "Dada" but not consistently to J. She has also said "no, no" and "hi" and tries to say doggie..."da" but hasn't said those things enough for me to be convinced they are actually words and not just imitations of us. Her babbling has expanded this month, however, and some of her jargon sounds like a foreign language. One of her favorite games is the "eh" game where she and an adult go back and forth saying "eh" to each other in varying volume and pitch. Actually, I shouldn't say an adult because she also played this game with another baby of the same age recently. Needless to say, that was ADORABLE. If you want to see the "eh" game in action, check out the video in my post "The long cut," a couple of posts before this one. The "eh" game starts at 2:42 in the video. Her adorable little girl giggle is right at the end of her interview (above).

Evie has, as all young kids do, an amazing amount of interest in and understanding of electronic gadgets. Here she is playing with her Great-Grandpa's handheld fishing game at the cabin a couple of weeks ago: She also has figured out how to turn on and off cell phones and has created some new contacts in my cell phone: 2, 25 and 82. I have to scroll by those numbers now when I'm calling someone from my address book. I don't delete them because it's so funny to me! She is extremely interested in her dad's blackberry, too. He's let her play with it a couple of times and now whenever she sees him with it she lunges for it.

A family photo from our trip to Minnesota. J, Evie, me, Nana, Papa, Aunt C, Pika Puppy and Uncle M:

Playing with bubbles, with Great-Grandma:

Our little mermaid doing naked baby yoga in her pool:

I love this shot:

She isn't interested in Baby M*um M*ums anymore (drat!) and barely tolerates puffs, so we've moved on to crunchy toddler snacks and yogurt melts and such. We just started using the S*nack T*rap with her and she's figuring it out pretty well. Some snacks still escape, but it's better than watching her dump a bowl on the floor and eat her snack with dog hairs sticking to it:

Anyone remember this picture from when Evie was 2 months old? She loves this bear now, and prefers that her Daddy play with it with her, because he makes it growl and paw at her with its big vinyl claws. She also loves for J to "trample" her with a small stuffed buffalo I found at a yard sale. He makes it paw the floor and snort and then rampage toward her. He lowers her to the ground and stampedes the buffalo over her body. She LOVES this game, and only Dada does it right. I've tried. You can see for yourself in the above interview, at the 3:30 mark.

Yesterday was Evie's first time being able to toddle through one of the spray grounds that so many shopping centers and parks are putting in:

She had a great time!

And it was a perfect day for it because it was warm but overcast. I still put sunblock on her, of course.

In other news, we purchased a potty and put it in the bathroom next to the big potty. My reasoning is that girls potty learn earlier than boys, and cloth diapered babies potty learn earlier than babies in disposables (because they don't like the feeling of being wet), so potentially Evie could be ready to potty learn before she turns 2. We're going to let her lead the way and let us know when she wants to try, but the first step is understanding what a potty is and what it is for. I often sit her on her potty while I'm on mine, and give her lots of praise for it. Thus, she loves to sit on it! I wish I had a picture of the times that she put the pot on her head, but it's rare that I have the camera with me in the bathroom. :) We have put her on it naked, usually before a bath, but she hasn't gone in it yet. When she does for the first time, I'm going to lavish clapping and huzzahs on her:

The last 2 months (since I never did a proper post for 10 months) have been full and rich. Evie is a social butterfly who thrives in new environments and loves people-watching. At home, alone, with me, she is cranky, clingy and easily bored. She can't tolerate watching me get something done (folding laundry, doing dishes, eating), especially when she's getting tired. My coping strategies are 1. putting her down for a nap when she gets whiny and 2. getting out of the house every day. When Evie turned 9 months old, our only activities were church, shopping and irregularly activities with friends. In the past 2 months I've joined two different moms' clubs, signed up for free activities and events at the library, actively sought out other moms for play dates, signed up for P*arents as T*eachers and investigated MOPS groups in our area that are starting up soon (with the start of the school year). I have successfully created a manic level of busyness for Evie and myself, which is keeping both of us happy at the moment. Now if only Evie didn't hate her car seat so much...

I don't want to be one of those moms who over-schedules her baby, but it's more of a coping strategy than a goal in and of itself. Anyhow, I'm enjoying meeting new people as well, and Evie usually has a blast as soon as we get to wherever and she gets out of the car. Even at a recent library event where most of it was over her head (storytelling to a mixed audience of ages 0-10 or so), she enjoyed cruising around the back of the audience, interacting with the other babies who were doing the same thing. Now that she's toddling, all of these activities are going to be that much more fun for her. Hopefully we'll be able to stay busy and connected through the winter, despite midwestern weather.

In other news, it seems that Congress is working on an "abortion reduction" bill (Ryan DeLauro bill) that includes a new, larger, adoption tax credit (bumped up to $15,000 and will increase each year, adjusted by inflation). I'm not going to go into how adoption tax credits will reduce abortions (?), but just be thankful that this issue is in the news and hope that a tax credit passes, as long as the rest of the bill isn't undesirable in any way. If the tax credit is extended, J and I will probably wait until Evie is 3 to adopt again. If it isn't renewed, we'll probably jump back into the pool soon and try to adopt again before the current tax credit expires in December 2010. We'll see.