Eleven Months

Eleven months is the besssssst! This whole thing just gets more and more fun and if you were to ask me if I'd go back in time to, say, three months I'd say NO WAY.  I love eleven months.

Here's what our sweet girl is up to these days:

Playing outside with grass.

She is incredibly expressive with her face and her corresponding sounds.

Livin' it up.  The moments when this girl ISN'T smiling or having a good time are very few.

She's grown three teeth in the last two weeks - two on the bottom and one on top.  A fourth top tooth is peeking through.

She loves mirrors!

It's so interesting watching Charlee play - it's so true that babies learn best whilst playing.

Holding on to her Pa's hand to get steady...

But she can stand all on her own now! She's getting stronger and steadier every day.

This girl is a peek-a-boo champion.

PEEK!

Charlee is now sleeping 11 hours through the night, usually from 8pm-7am.  She went through a phase two weeks ago where we thought she was dropping her PM nap, but turns out she was just faking.  She still naps twice a day, usually for 1-2 hours each nap. 

As I mentioned in the photo captions, our girl now has teeth!  Teeth haven't been a big deal for us yet.  I've heard complete horror stories about babies getting teeth and I was dreading this stage, but so far Charlee has been relatively untouched by the baby mayhem that teething seems to induce.  This isn't to say we haven't had a few struggles, but seriously, it hasn't been bad at all.

We're wondering if Charlee is going through a growth spurt right now because she suddenly is drinking over 35oz of formula per day AND consuming four meals of solid (ie. pureed) foods.  So. Much. Eating.

Charlee is in love with her sippy cup and drinks probably up to two cups of water per day,  She chugs water like it's going out of style and even makes a "glug" sound when she swallows.

Charlee is now standing on her own for upward of 20 seconds and she is couch surfing like a champ.  Her speed crawling has been taken to the next level and sometimes I swear she's not even touching the ground because she's SO fast.  We still love our baby jail!  In addition to crawling, Charlee has also learned to climb stairs.  I take care of my friend's son on Wednesdays and a few weeks ago I called out to Jackson to ask what he and Charlee were doing.  His reply?  "We're just on the stairs!" Turns out Charlee knows how to climb up stairs!  I'm constantly amazed at the things she just seems to either know how to do, or can easily figure out.  I'm not big on showing her how to do things, I'd rather let her figure things out on her own, or create a new way to do things.  So far, this strategy has worked very well for us.

As always, our girl melts hearts wherever we go.  Perfect strangers stop and talk to her because she is, by nature, such a friendly child.  Charlee waves at everything...the cats, cars, leaves, us, strangers - we are all welcome in her world :)  It is rare for Charlee to be angry or distressed (unless she's hungry or tired, which makes sense!) and she just seems to be such a kind soul.  I love this about her.  I think this is actually my favourite thing about her.

Eleven months has been fantastic and we are very excited for the next big milestone...a first birthday!

xxk&j&charlee rae