Ten and a Half Months!

Merry Christmas (belated)!  I hope to get a Christmas post up at some point, but since we all know I can't get it together enough to even get a monthly Allie update up on time, we'll see if that actually happens.  Allie is napping right now, so I'm going to try and get this update out.

Allie is ten ten and a half months old!  Wow, I can't believe she's almost a year old, so weird.  I'm really late with this update and I honestly can't remember what's happened before ten months and in the last two weeks, so I'll just update you on where we're at right now.

First off, the ten month photo shoot was a complete disaster, because little-miss-can't-sit-still would not cooperate.

Why yes, the sticker is stuck to my leg in this photo!

Right after I wrote my nine month update, Allie started babbling with her bababa, dadada, and all that, so it was nice to not have to worry about that being an issue, since I was kind of concerned she wasn't doing that yet when I wrote the nine month update.  It seems like with a lot of her developmental milestones, all I have to do is express concern about it and she goes ahead and does it.  I will admit she has said "dada" a lot, but I am not ready to call that her first world since Greg is typically no where in the vicinity when she is saying it, it just seems to be general babble.  Still, Greg likes to give me crap about how he won the "dada" vs. "mama" first word battle.  I actually wouldn't mind if she did look right at him and call him dada.  That would be so cute :)  Allie is very into Clyde now too, so it wouldn't surprise me if her "da" is really directed at Clyde, trying to say "dog" (which was my first word!).  She also really likes rubber ducks, so it could be "duck".

I feel like Allie is getting super close to walking.  She easily stands and can move while holding on to things.  She's also super fast in her walker and is getting good at turning around and moving in multiple directions.  I think she'll be walking by the time she's a year old if not sooner.  She also stands without holding on to things a lot now, so she's definitely testing the waters.  I think she'll be walking by a year if not sooner.

As of nine months Allie still had no teeth!  This surprised me, because she's been pretty much on target with most milestones, and this was definitely late.  About a week and a half ago one of her daycare teachers pointed at her mouth and said "I think she's teething now", because she was doing something funny with her mouth.  Sure enough, I felt around in her mouth and felt a sharp edge poking through on one of her lower middle teeth, so it's finally happening now.  She's doing ok with it.  The other day my parents were watching her while I was at work and she completely lost it for about three hours, and I ended up leaving work early to rescue them.  I stopped at Walgreens on my way home and bought every teething product they had.  I think half of it was that she just wanted me to hold and comfort her and no one else would do.  Poor kiddo.  Tylenol, chilled pacifiers, and teething tablets seem to be the most helpful out of everything we've tried.

Like I said, sleep has been a little bit disrupted lately due to teething.  She was pretty consistently sleeping through the night right before the first tooth poked through, but then got thrown off.  I have had some nights where I've gone in if she seems particularly upset and others where I've let her cry and settle herself back to sleep when it seems like she would.  I feel like I can never really decide what to do.  I want to be consistent, but don't want her to suffer alone if she needs comforting.  We started putting Allie to bed a little earlier, because it seemed like putting her to bed later didn't help much with making her sleep later, so she might as well go to bed earlier and get the sleep on the front end.  Typically she goes down by about 7:15pm, then can be up anywhere from like 5:15-7am.  Most mornings she's up more in the 5:30am range, which kind of sucks.  She usually takes two naps- one in the morning around 10am- that can be 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours, then an afternoon nap around 2ish that is about the same length.  Daycare tells me she's not one of the better nappers, and I agree.

Feeding is going well.  She eats three meals a day.  A typical day of feeding looks like this:

6:30am: Nurse.

8:15am: oatmeal cereal mixed with applesauce or mashed banana, sometimes a handful of sliced blueberries (her favorite food by a landslide)

10am: Bottle or nurse

12pm: A level two baby food or pouch if she's at daycare or out, maybe chunks of sweet potato and banana and/or whole grain cracker with some almond butter if she's home.

1:30pm: Bottle or nurse

Some kind of afternoon snack maybe (cheerios, diced fruit, etc).

4pm: Bottle or nurse

5:45pm: Dinner of rotisserie chicken, butternut squash chunks, coconut milk yogurt.

7pm: Nurse.

She sometimes does have a middle of the night nurse session, and once in a while she'll have a 5:15am and 7:15am nurse session if she wakes up really early and doesn't eat much at the first session and I want to top her off before daycare.  

We met with the allergist and confirmed Allie has a milk and egg allergy.  She can have milk or eggs cooked in stuff like baked goods, but other than that, it's a no go for now.  We have a bottle of Benedryl and an epi pen for her just in case, but I think she'll grow out of it, but it's still less than ideal.  I think we're going to end up doing a combination of different milks- hemp, almond, soy, coconut, when she hits a year.  We'll probably see what she likes and use different ones for home and daycare since she can't have nut milk there.

Allie can now clap, wave, hug, and understands more of what we're saying, as far as we can tell.  Everyone says she has a lot of personality and she constantly cracks us up!

I keep saying every day she's starting to look and act more like a little girl all the time, and less like a baby.  The daycare teachers told me she's been kissing one of the boys!  Whoa, slow down little girl!

Likes: BLUEBERRIES, butternut squash, my phone, bells, Clyde, rubber ducks, me, my mom, waving, clapping, cuddling, practicing walking.

Dislikes:  Being strapped into pretty much anything (stroller, carseat, etc...), being confined in her play yard, crib, or Pack N Play, being changed, not being able to see me if I have to run to the bathroom or upstairs for a minute.

She's usually in 9M clothes now, and still in size 3 diapers.  I don't see that changing anytime soon.  I have no idea about her weight or height.  I probably won't find out til her year check up.  I would guess maybe 17 lbs, but I usually guess wrong.

Anyway, life is pretty good.  It's super hectic, and she's getting more fun, but also more challenging as she grows.  As usual, there's a lot more I would like to say and blog about, but finding the time is nearly impossible.  I'm exhausted, but happy.