Growing a Little Schulze: February 2012

Claire turns one tomorrow! Here's a look back at her 11 month old self.

Feeding: Nursing in the morning and 3 bottles during the day (6 oz). 3 meals a day. She eats a lot of things including olives and pickles. Pasta and peas are still favorites! She makes a cute mmm noise when she's eating something yummy.

Sleeping: She sleeps about 11-11.5 hours a night. Most nights she sleeps through, but there are still plenty of late night wake-ups that are no fun. Bedtime is between 7:30 and 8. Wake-up is usually between 7 and 8. She has just recently started transition to one nap. When it was two naps, she'd go down around 11 and again around 3 or 4 and sleep 1 to 1.5 hours at a time. We're still figuring out the one nap thing. She seems ready to go down between 12:30 and 2:00. On a good day she'll sleep 2 hours but usually it's more like 1-1.5, which doesn't seem to be enough. We're dealing with a good bit of crankiness.

Development:

Motor - We are up to 5-6 steps at at time! She prefers crawling to get around and is very speedy. She also loves to climb up the stairs, but is no good at coming down!

Communication - Definitely an increase in vocalizations. She finally said ma ma! It doesn't mean me yet, but at least she can say it. Da da is old hat, but she doesn't seem to associate it with Jeff just yet. She babbles with increasing inflection. She has a lot of "sh" sounds in her vocabulary. "She she" or "shish shish" are frequent sounds. She can imitate the sign for "more" and is getting closer to using it appropriately. Right now she is over using it but at least she'll make it independently. She can also imitate the sign for milk, but not "all done" just yet. She has mastered waving and clapping. We tried working on blowing kisses. She doesn't do any motions, just make the mmwha kissing noise, which is totally adorable. Especially when tucking her into bed at night. She knows her name and understands the word no (not that she always listens to it!). She loves peek a boo and the Itsy Bitsy Spider. She'll even try to the hand motion for the spider.

Play - Her interests and skills are much the same. She still loves to pull stuff apart - the ring stacker, a bin of toys, the tupperware in the cabinet - it all needs to become a jumbled mess. Occasionally I'll call her Captain Destructo. She loves her Fisher Price Learning Home and playing peek a boo with Mommy in the little window that goes up and down. Or getting mail in the mailbox. She is no longer afraid of the busy ball popper that her aunt and uncle got her for Christmas. However, she'd rather just grab the balls instead of letting them cycle through the popper. She likes balls of all sorts and will sit for a minute or two to roll a ball back and forth. She will even attempt to roll it back a few times before she gets impatient and just comes at you to get it. Something that is rather recent is an interest in books. She loves to flip the pages. Touch and feel books are a big hit. Those actually allow us to get through a story, rather than just flipping through the pages quickly.