Growing a Little Schulze: 10 Months

Ellie hit the 10 month mark on May 26th. Our sweet, happy, determined girl!

Another month of lots of developments. She continued to improve on those first steps she took last month and started walking all over. She can squat and stand back up. On June 6th, she figured out how to push herself up from standing instead of having something to pull up on. She quickly became pretty skilled in navigating around and over toys in the playroom and on and off the little musical piano/keyboard toy we have.
In addition to walking, she's been working on her climbing and other havoc-wreaking motor skills. She started climbing into the walker wagon and in Claire's anywhere chair. But of course, did not know how to get down. At least at first. She figured it out pretty quickly. She also developed for love for opening drawers and of course closing them, endangering her fingers every. single, time. And if a door isn't closed completely, she will work her little fingers in there and pry it open.

With her walking skills, she's developed a new favorite activity. She loves just toddling around with random objects in her hand or mouth. She will walk out of the playroom with a plastic road sign or satellite dish from Claire's rescue city toy hanging out of her mouth. She also enjoys walking around carrying pieces of clothing. (see video here) All well and good until she chooses something longer than her and creates her own tripping hazard. Lots of bumps on the head this month with the walking and climbing! Another favorite activity is burying her face in blankets laying on the ground, especially fleece ones. She finds it hilarious if Claire joins her in this activity.

A unique Ellie quirk: When you pick her up out of her crib and try to hold her against your stomach or chest, she immediately pushes and wiggles to move to your side. She is not content in the middle, she must be on your hip!

She's displaying some understanding of the use of objects. She will put a shoe to her foot as if to put it on or a brush up to her head. So of course, we think she is a genius!

Language stuff:
Clicking noise
Opening and closing mouth (like a fish) (video here)
Buh buh
Ah yai yai yay

She walks up to me and says "Ah jih ju!"
So I prompt her to say "ma ma!"
She responds: "Da da da da"

At the very end of the month, she did develop the m sound so she can say "mah mah mah mah"

Food stuff: Still getting 4 bottles a day. We were nursing in the morning until the beginning of June. But she would get a supplemental bottle right after. And after pumping a whopping ounce and a half one morning after being away from her for a day I realized that the acrobatic gymnastics that was our short nursing session was really not worth it. So a few days after the start of June, we were done with nursing. She did continue to get breastmilk sporadically once a day as I remembered to pull from my freezer stash.

On June 16th, I gave her peanut butter for the first time on her toast. No allergic reaction. Yay! So now she can enjoy a nice PB&J, a favorite of both her sister and her daddy!

Sleep: Very similar to last month. She's in bed around 7:30 or so. Still giving us some of those before 7 wake ups. With that, her morning nap sometimes gets moved back to 9:30 or 10. Sometimes she needs this, sometimes it will take her a while to fall asleep. She goes down for her afternoon nap around 2:30 or 3:00 still.

We finished up with size 2 diapers and moved up to size 3. She's wearing mostly 9 month clothes and some 6-12 month stuff from stores with that sizing.