11 months already?

Our beautiful girlDon't drop me, Daddy!

Swinging beautyArrrg! I'm coming to get you with all of my teeth!
Can you believe Caroline is 11 months old? In a month it will be a year!? Yikes! It is hard to believe so much time has flown by. Our wee baby has become a little girl before our eyes, and it is so, so much fun to watch. Mike said yesterday, "She's literally changed since I left for work this morning." And its true. Every day she's learning new things and showing more of her personality. Just in the past month I feel like she's really started to understand the world around her so much more. I can finally see that she understands many of the things I say to her. She'll come when I tell her to, or go get something and bring it back, she'll hand things over when I ask, though sometimes not. She also definitely understands "no" but she's certainly testing her limits. We have had our first "time out" (less than a minute stuck in her pack n play with no toys- the end of the world!) which she didn't like but seemed to learn from.

She's really quite a walker now--does it at least as much as she crawls. She's still faster crawling, but not for long, I think. She still wobbles and falls a lot, but she'll cross the room pretty easily and doesn't just go from object to object anymore. We did get our baby gates to keep her trapped, which works well, and the rest of the place is thoroughly babyproofed. She's also quite a little squirmer. She refuses to lay down to get a new diaper, even when bribed with a toy or tube of Desitin. She likes to roll over and stand up and reach out to anything she can find. Interestingly, I think her depth perception has improved, because she doesn't try to dive off the changing table anymore!

So there is a new study out that says that kids who gesture a lot as toddlers tend to do better in school later in life. I think we're on the right track with Caroline :) She's a pretty good mimicker- she waves, claps, and does twinkle, twinkle. She also loves to say pick me up with her arms up. We're working a lot on sign language: "eat", "milk", "more", "all done", "sleep", etc. which is coming along. We're also trying to get her to blow kisses, so she can send you all some love. She hasn't developed a ton of spoken language yet- but she does say "Ball" and seem to mean it and not just repeat it. She's also still saying "Dada" ALL the time, but not "Mama" so much, unless she's super cranky. I'm really excited for her to start talking. We spent the day with a 17 month old a few weeks ago and I was amazed at what she could do--she was talking up a storm. I can't wait!!

She still loves to play, and is now much better about doing it independently for good stretches of time. Maybe it is by necessity- I've been so preoccupied packing things up that she has had to entertain herself a bit. As long as she has enough toys or books to play with and she's not too tired, she does well. She's also starting to really play more with other kids. I don't know how much she was doing this before, since I rarely saw her with other kids, but it is really great to watch her at playgroup with the other kids. They chase each other around and steal toys from one another, slobbering all over everything. She and Casey, who've known each other since their days in utero, when the moms were bobbing away in the pool, are finally acting like they know one another and play together well.

She's still a bit demanding when she wants something she can't have- usually the laptop, remote, camera, or cell phone. I probably make it worse by letting her goof off with those things for a minute before I get fed up with her slobbering all over them. I can see tantrums in our future!

Sleep is going pretty well now, after a month or so of regressing and waking up at least once or twice a night. I think she got off-kilter over Christmas, and then was sick and it just snowballed. The experts also say that kids have trouble sleeping when they start walking--something about their brains working in overdrive-- so who knows if that had something to do with it as well. But now she'll go down at 8pm, and wakes up at 6 or 6:30, will nurse and then usually sleep/snuggle in our bed for another hour or so. That is such fun time as a family, just waking up together. Caroline will often crawl over to Mike and wack him in the face just to make sure he's awake. He obviously appreciates it :)

This might be my favorite age yet. She's just changing so fast, and it feels so good to have her finally understand what I'm saying. It has been a blast to watch her start walking, and she's just so fun and snuggly too!