Ten Months

Charlee's ten month post is a week late, but I guess that is a clear indication of how busy and full our life is with a ten month old firecracker of a small child.  Nine months was fun and ten months has just been even MORE fun!

She learned how to do fish lips!

One of her current fav toys is this measuring tape.

This month Charlee added the "ga" sound to her repertoire of words.  She is constantly chattering away, but what is even more amazing is that she really seems to hear and understand us when we talk to her.  We've gotten into the habit of talking to her all the time and explaining things to her so she knows what we are doing and I really think all the talking we are doing is paying off because this is one attentive girl we have!

I've read these two books and have been making my way through Janet Lansbury's blog and I'm loving everything she has to say about raising babies and toddlers as whole people.  Janet's concepts aren't revolutionary by any means, but simple and oft forgotten in our culture (I think).  Since reading more about Janet's child-rearing philosophy we've started adopting a few of her practices with Charlee, such as...

BABY JAIL!

Oh my gosh, I LOVE our new baby jail.  I found this baby jail on Amazon and ordered it straight away.  Charlee learned to crawl, speed crawl and pull herself up on to all things in the span of 2.5 weeks and I was going a bit crazy trying to keep her safe.  I also found I was saying "no" a lot to her, but then I read a piece by Janet Lansbury about baby jails (yes, she calls them that!) and how great they are for babies.  Baby jails tend to have a negative stereotype in our culture, but Janet's research shows how great a closed in, safe space can be for babies...a space where they can move and crawl and play freely, without having to be told "no" every five seconds.  After reading that article on baby jails I ordered one up and now we use it all the time.  Freedom restored to all humans in this house.

This is what our living room looks like on a daily basis.  Mandatory fun times.

When she's not hamming it up for the camera, Charlee also likes to...

Eat her socks.

Pat her cute tummy.

Find and eat the tags on ALL things.

Continue to pat her cute tummy.

Play peek-a-boo by herself.

Speed crawl to all destinations.

And pull herself up on all things.

Charlee had a checkup appointment in mid-August and weighed in at just over 20lbs.  She also continues to be in the "greater than 95th" percentile for height.  Our ten month old girl is wearing 18 month sized clothing across the board.  In fact, 18 month sized jammies are actually too small now (I seriously just bought them a month ago...) because of the leg length and foot size - oh the joys we are in for when it comes to finding pants for our girl!  Let it be known that in 10 months of life Charlee has grown an entire foot in length.  When I actually think about that for a second I realize how drastically important development is at this age.  When will she ever grow 30 centimeters in ten months ever again?  That just boggles my mind.

Some people have asked, "Are you sure she was born 5 weeks early?"  "Are you sure your due date was correct?" According to what the doctors said, yes and yes.  All we know is, she's blowing every single measurement statistic and "milestone" out of the water and we are so stoked on that. 

Charlee is still eating purees that I make for her.  She seems to have a strong aversion to anything remotely textured...her gag reflex is top notch.  According to my mom, Charlee's eating habits seem to be following very closely in my baby eating habits, so we will see how this all pans out.   I finally broke down and bought some iron fortified organic oat cereal (originally I wanted to avoid this at all costs).  Charlee's doctor mentioned she needed to be getting more iron, even though she's consuming approximately 30-35oz of iron fortified formula every day.  The doctor suggested we try some Baby Led Weaning tactics, so we started with egg yolks.  We tried  and it didn't work very well.  Granted, we only tried for two days and I know that's not enough time, but when Charlee chokes on even the tiniest chunk of anything she projectile vomits everything everywhere.  This has happened four times now (choking on a small chunk of food when offered, projectile vomits, huge mess).  In my mind this kind of defeats of the purpose of getting food IN to her system...so for now I still puree fruits and veggies and we've added in two tablespoons of cereal per day, as well as full fat Greek yogurt.  She is clearly growing and thriving, so I don't think we have any problems there!

And with that, our girl is awake from her first nap of the day.

Here are a few more photos to close the 10 month update.  Enjoy!

xxk&j&charlee rae