11 Months: One Month Left

Well, here we are, 11 months of Ava!

It's been kind of a tough month as Ava has been sickly for most of it. She's been congested most of the time so she's a constant mouth breather and has a cough, a runny nose, and yucky sneezes that make us run for a wipe. Whatever it is, it needs to leave her alone! We are all tired of it! Her symptoms are gradually going away, it is just taking forrrevvvverrrr. She seems to be a lot better over this last week. 

She is still our smiley, giggly girl, but with major attitude! She has many preferences now and has learned how to communicate what she wants more and more! She gets upset when something doesn't work out the way she wants it to. Yelling, throwing herself back, and even biting her hand sometimes. Something tells me that we are going to have to help this child deal with frustration in the future!

There are times when Chris and I will stop and look at each other because it sounds like she is saying phrases to us! Like "thank you" or "chicken"...so what counts as a first word?! If it is making a similar sound while looking at the object, then she said her first word a loooong time ago...and that word was "due" for "Duke". She says "mama" and "dah-dee"! She finally signed "all done" at lunch last week! She was so proud, as was I!! She now says "ahh dune" when she is finished nursing or eating. She says "hi due" all the time when she sees Duke! I think she's also trying to say "the end" after we are done reading a book together.

She loves to get into things and explore!

She likes to toss things out of her way and knock down towers and take toys out of buckets and take apart duplos.

She likes to sit and "read". She will turn the pages and look at everything for awhile.

She LOVES to play with Duke's face. We often find her sitting with him on his bed!

She is learning what "eat" means, and that if she crawls to the baby gate by the kitchen and yells that she gets food!

We love that she can now crawl into our laps and sit with us when she wants to. She reaches out for us to pick her up. She knows that she's being sneaky when she crawls into the kitchen when we've forgotten to put the gate up. I scoop her up and she laughs and laughs! All this new communication is so fun for us all! It's opened up a whole new world!

And Ava took her first steps a few days ago!! She's been able to take one step for awhile, and we've just been waiting for the day she would realize she could take more. She walked to her daddy after he got home from work! We kept her up a past her bedtime so she could practice some more because we were all having so much fun!

Currently Ava nurses 4 times a day: upon waking, after her 2 naps, and then once before bed. She has breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I've recently added in snacks after her naps, too. All this girl does is eat!! I am so so so thankful that she sleeps through the night! She falls asleep around 7:30 and wakes at 5:30, so she sleeps 10 hours at night. I wish that could be longer, but at least there are no more night wakings!!

Ava has definitely been much more selective with what foods she'll eat. A few weeks ago I couldn't get her to eat bananas, and then 2 weeks later she was in love with them again. Currently if she doesn't want something, she will throw it on the floor. Sad face! I'm hoping we will round the corner and she will be happy with everything I give her again soon. It could be due to her sinuses or teething. Or just experimenting with life! She will never turn down fruit or cheese, though! It must be so fun for her now that she's realized that she can control things; the toddler stage will be fun with this kid!

(I'm being serious...and I'm also being sarcastic!)

I am so excited for all these "big girl" changes coming our way soon! I've already added a lovey to her crib when she sleeps. She's going to get milk from a cup. I get to gradually stop nursing (I can't WAIT to wear regular bras!!). I plan to adjust her bedtime routine so nursing is at the very beginning in hopes that she won't miss it as much when we wean. When she was tiny, the routine was jammies-book-nursing, now its jammies-nursing-book, and I will change it to nursing-jammies-book starting today.

I used to think that your baby turning one really wasn't a huge deal. But I can already feel tears welling up behind my eyes just thinking about it, and we are still a month out! I feel proud to see her hitting all these milestones. I feel happy that she is so happy and in love with life. I feel in love with the little person she is turning into! I feel a little sad that we will soon be done with infancy (even though I'm glad some of those tough months are behind us). I feel a little bit scared for what is to come; the toddler stage will be such an adventure!