11 Months and Going Strong

Emma is 11 months old!

She turned 11 months yesterday actually, and just this week alone she has taken her first steps unaided, and shown us that she can throw a ball, chase it down, and throw it again. I’m amazed at how much she is learning!

It’s funny how you can sit down with a child and repeat something over and over again with no immediate signs that they understood until they wake up the next morning and can do it like a pro. It happens all the time with Emma. For instance, we spent about 30 minutes one night showing Emma the “fish face” thinking she’d be able to do it easily. Well after that amount of time I stopped us by saying that she’s still too small to make her lips do that. Well low and behold it wasn’t even 10:00 am the next morning and she was doing it like crazy! My Mom was holding her and said “where did you learn that?” Haha.

So yeah, Emma started walking two days before she turned 11 months. She still isn’t doing it all the time, but she’s getting there. It seems like she is still very cautious and wobbly so she takes her time with it for the most part. It’s so cute to watch though! Everyone always tells me that once they start walking they get into everything, but Emma gets into everything already and let’s face it, I’m looking forward to hand-holding. All-in-all she probably walks the length of the livingroom about 5 or 6 times a day. The rest of the time she holds onto something to walk around or she will crawl as a last resort.

We’ve visited the park a couple times now and she absolutely loves it. We normally start with the swings so that she can look around and take it all in, and then we move to the little kids’ play area so she can walk around and interact with other kids. This last time she even climbed up on things! She doesn’t even do that at home where there’s cushioning! It makes me want to look into helmets. I plan to make as many trips to the park as possible once it quits raining each and every weekend.

I’ve got party-planning going on in full force now. We’ve got one month from today to get a lot of stuff done around the house. And I mean A LOT. I wanted to even paint the inside and outside of the house, but I don’t see that happening now. Oh well. I’m still going to power wash, and move furniture around. I’m making some decorations by hand, and using lots of Pinterest ideas. While I will probably go too far over the top, I’m having fun planning it all.

Oh! Emma’s eating has improved some. I’ve been focusing a lot on dinner time and her options of what to eat that she can feed herself. Feeding herself is key now because she spits out almost anything we try to feed her. Sample dinner menus:

-          Chicken strip (peel the breading off) cubed, canned carrots rinsed and quartered, french fries cubed.

-          Turkey lunch meat in little pieces, canned carrots rinsed and quartered, frozen peas.

-          Hot dog sliced and quartered, cheese chunks (string cheese cut in half length-wise and then cut into little cubes), frozen peas.

Then for dessert we will do blueberries, fruit cocktail, applesauce or canned mandarin oranges. Speaking of canned oranges, I just read today that they shouldn’t have those until they are over one year old. I have no idea why and I haven’t even tried to look it up yet. Anyone have any ideas?

I also noticed that she will eat one thing at a time and save the worst for last. She’s so funny. But, if she sits there long enough she will eat it all. I’m also trying to get her used to the concept that she doesn’t get dessert until she has finished all of her meal (or the majority of it since she squishes a lot of it).

Emma and I met up with my friend Colleen and her daughter Aven. Oh my goodness Aven is so cute! She has a ton of teeth already (which runs in Colleen’s family) and it makes her even cuter! Anyway, Colleen had little Tupperware bowls filled with little peanut butter crackers (those little Ritz ones) and mini graham cracker squares. Now, her daughter I want to say is 15 months old so she can have honey now – if you were questioning the graham crackers. Back to the point, when Colleen gave Aven a peanut butter cracker, she stuck the whole thing in her mouth. I about had a panic attack. But, Colleen said that she handles it well and they haven’t had any issues yet. Alyssa’s daughter Autumn goes to town too. So why am I so paranoid? Honestly, I think I would have handled it all so much better if I didn’t have my parents filling me with fear as usual – “A blueberry is round and if she ever swallows one whole you’ll never get it out of there!”

Well, that’s about it. I’m sure I’ve missed a few new things that Emma had learned since she learns something new just about every day. While it’s breaking my heart that my baby girl is growing up so fast, I can’t wait for our new adventures together.

Jenni