Hopefully...

I hope everyone who likes to read things over here has been keeping up with my day-to-day mini updates on Twitter and Facebook. It's so easy to get comfortable updating a "status" with moderately interesting goings on than it is to sit down and write a bunch about little things. I would like to take the time, though, to sit down and really iterate the wonders of having an 11 month old (this Friday), as well as talk about some plans for her BIRTHDAY!


She wakes us up each morning by happily exploring our bedroom and the scattered toys she left lying around the floor the day before. Sometimes she lucks out and there's a basket of folded, clean laundry that hasn't been put away yet that she can empty and fling about without us noticing.


If we stay sleeping too long before turning on Playhouse Disney, she lets us hear about it by climbing all over our heads and pinching our noses and/or pulling our hair. Also whining very loudly. (We can sleep again when she's in college, right?)


So many fun things she's learned to do recently:

• She'll touch your nose if you ask her to. "Where's Daddy's nose?"
• She knows the signs for dog, bird, and "all done".
• She turns off the light switch every night before bed.
• She loves to drop food on the floor to feed the dogs when she's not interested in it anymore.
• She "cruises" constantly, and has been walking behind her push carts.
• I can't leave the room without her yelling after me. She stands up at the closed door and bangs on it.
• She loves to roll the ball to us -- sometimes it even heads in the right direction toward us! Usually she waits for us to send it back to her, but sometimes she forgets and chases after it, even if we're trying to roll it back to her.
• She's learning better to put things IN other things. 
• She's able to point at things to tell us what she wants (usually she can't have it, but... sometimes she gets lucky).
• She recognizes these words pretty consistently: daddy, mommy, gramma, hello, bye bye, nose, Wonder Pets, Ming-Ming, fishy, monkey, love/hug, up, all done, banana, drink, down, come here, dog, Leela, Myles, kitty, bird, tweet, bite, shakey-shake, kicky-kick, sing, Jho, "whasat?", "can I have that"/"give that to Mommy", in, out, bouncey-bounce, book, page, look, "push the button", "roll the ball", "go get it".
• To "love" or "hug" her monkey, she just puts her head down on him. Also, she will only love/hug her monkey. Not sure why she hasn't figured out how to apply the action to anything else.
• She thinks that "where are you going?" means she needs to crawl away from us as fast as she possibly can. (While giggling the whole way.) 
• She'll occasionally get her groove on when the music hits her. Mostly by bouncing up and down, but sometimes she gets her head & arms shaking, too.
• She always wants to go to gramma so she can try to get her glasses.
• She's getting good at playing peek-a-boo on her own, and thinks it's really funny to see herself in the mirror. She seems to know that that girl there is "Calina." 
• She can see photos of us and recognize us and herself.
• "Bouncey-bounce" involves her throwing whatever is in her hands to the ground as hard as she possibly can to see if it bounces.
• "Kicky-kick" involves her riding around in her stroller and kicking the heck out of anything her feet come in contact with (bushes, racks of clothing, walls, whatever.)
• She basically goes around saying "whassat" in a whispered voice and pointing at things... I think it's because we inadvertently go around asking her "What's that?" in a whispered voice when she points at things. For example, she points her finger at the dog, we say, "What's that?" in a whispered voice, and then answer our own question: "Dog, doggy, Leela, dog, woof woof." Pretty much all she hears is "whasssat". So that's what she says to everything she sees.
• She lights up and immediately pays attention whenever she hears any of these songs: Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, the Wonder Pets songs, Ants Go Marching; any of the songs from Playhouse Disney shows: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Hot Dog Dance, Hop up Jump in, Let's get to Work, Imagination Movers, the Paw Pilot songs from Special Agent Oso; the intro to Yo Gabba Gabba, ABC's, The Noble Duke of York, and whatever Colin sings to her. (He sings her to sleep every night, and I'm not sure what his current repertoire is...)

She is still nursing 6+ times a day, though she really loves to eat solid foods. More than half of her nursing happens in the middle of the night or in the early AM hours. She's very skilled at using her "pincers" and also taking little bites off a big piece of something like bread or crackers. She loves pretty much anything we give her, so far she's only objected to (read: HATED/refused to eat) mashed potatoes and boiled yuca (which are both pretty similar in texture). But any fruit, veggie, or grain... and she's totally into it. Gramma loves to make her oatmeal & applesauce. Yes, so far, she's a little vegan baby, and she seems to like it that way.


We're almost done with her helmet. We're pretty resolved with this one being her last, and we're pretty sure we'll let her stop wearing it after her 1st birthday.


Speaking of which!


We were considering doing a big park party, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to come up with something that SHE would really love. So I think we're going to book a party at Amaya Papaya on her birthday (March 19th). It's a really fun little spot where she can basically have the run of the place, there are more cool things to play with than she could ever get to, and we can have snacks and cake with a few of her "friends". In other words: not much of a party for the grownups, but it'll be WAY more fun for her (and probably the other kids, too). We'd really love to do a "book" birthday for her (while she can't be too disappointed with such a thing), to help build up her book stash. It's a little sad at the moment, and she love love loves books.


That's long enough for now, but, oh yeah! Check out Google Buzz. It's like twitter or facebook, but they fixed all the annoying bits of both and created one thing. This post will almost certainly automatically show up on there.