Our 10 month old

10 months have flown by and as Mia's personality really begins to emerge, we fall more and more in love with her. Here is the latest and greatest at 10 months old

Eating
She continues to be a good eater. She loves her pureed foods (I've continued to make all of her food, which has been easy and sort of fun), and has been a bit slower to take on finger foods than I anticipated. Perhaps it is because she is still working with only two teeth. Favorite breakfast foods include waffles, pureed fruits, yogurt, oatmeal, toast (I've tried eggs a few times, but without much luck). At lunch we try to serve only finger foods. She seems to love deli turkey. Her tray usually has quite the sampling on it - cheese, different types of diced fruits and veggies, small crackers, pasta, etc. At dinner she eats several ounces of pureed vegetables (she's not picky - loves them all, even brussel sprouts!) and rice cereal along with any finger foods that she can have from the regular dinner table. Her favorite finger foods are puffs - and she enjoys teething biscuits as well! She has a cup of water or half juice/half water with just about every meal, and I have started to offer formula in a sippy cup occasionally to prepare her for the transition to regular milk in a few months. She still nurses about 4 times a day (wake up, late morning, before afternoon nap, bedtime) and in the past week I have substituted one feeding (late afternoon, when my supply feels lowest anyways) for a bottle, which she seems happy to have.

Sleeping
Ugh - this child has really put us in our place as far as the sleeping goes. I guess we were a bit over confident in our abilities to sleep train. Luke was such a difficult, fussy infant, but ended up being a champion sleeper by about 5 months old. Mia ... not so much. The good news: she is now very good at putting herself to sleep, both at night and for naps. The bad news: she still is not consistently sleeping through the night (and by that I mean, 11-12 hours). We often have a wake up somewhere between 2am and 4am about 4 nights out of every week. Until very recently, I would eventually respond to her because she could scream so loud and for so long that we weren't sleeping through it anyways (even without the monitor turned on), but we've made the decision with the go-ahead from our pediatrician to really put our foot down, so she's going to cry/yell it out at night. Earlier in the month I tried putting Mia to bed earlier (somewhere between 6:15 and 6:45), and this seemed to help her get through the night. So, her day looks something like: 6:45-7:00 wake up, 9:30-11:30 morning nap, 2:30-3:30/4:00 afternoon nap, and bedtime by 6:45.

Playing
Mia is very mobile. She is fast and often surprises people with how quickly she moves around given her size (since she looks so small). She can crawl at lightning speed, can cruise around furniture, and I even have caught her standing on her own without holding onto anything a few times in the past week. Her favorite game is climbing up the stairs while someone chases her. She also loves "helping Mommy" - putting laundry in the dryer, climbing into the open dishwasher, unloading newly folded laundry from the basket (onto the floor in one giant heap), and unrolling toilet paper from the rolls in all of the bathrooms. She doesn't seem to really love any one toy - in fact, she seems to like playing with all things that are NOT toys. And, of course, she loves anything her big brother is playing with, much to his dismay. Pat-a-cake and This Little Piggy are two of her favorite games and she has just recently started dancing (rocking) to music or singing.

Talking
This month has also brought with it some of Mia's first words. Her first word was "da-da," followed by "ma-ma." She also can now wave and knows the sign for "more." She loves to babble and "read" stories to us. We are working on learning many more new signs - Luke was such a great signer, and we loved to be able to communicate in that way with him when he was a baby, so hopefully it will be the same for Mia.

Growing
Ah, she's SUCH a peanut! People see her and almost always guess that she's about 6 months old (until they watch her take off crawling!). My guess is that she's about 16 pounds now. She is really fitting into the 6-12 month clothes, but sleepers in that size are still too big. Carter's 9 month clothes are still a bit big, but that's what she's wearing. When she wears disposable diapers they are size 2 ... although, I just bought a pack of size 3 this week for our upcoming trip to Cabo, and I just washed her medium sized BumGenius diapers and I'm going to put the smalls away. I am so savoring this time where she's still small and feels so much like a baby - I know it will be gone all too soon.

Just in general, Mia is a very happy and pretty easy baby. She definitely has a mind of her own, knows what she wants and isn't afraid to tell you, and is very short right now in the patience department (think yelling immediately upon waking or when she decides she has finished a meal). She can be very loud, loves to squeal, and is full of smiles and laughter. What a joy ... what a perfectly, well-rounded girl. We're in love!

Green girl

This girl is going GREEN!


Yep, after being annoyed with the Pamper's debacle this year (the ridiculous levels of chemicals in their new and "improved," but not really improved, just cheaper to make, diapers), followed by a long quest for diapers that I liked as much as I liked the old Pampers swaddlers and cruisers, I finally came across Huggies Pure & Natural. They are great, but at $0.35 a piece, I hated to buy them and then watch them just be thrown away. Not to mention the impact on the environment (Really?! 500 years to decompose IF they are exposed to sunlight and in biodegradable plastic ... GROSS!).

I researched the cloth diaper options (SO many to choose from ... these aren't just your mom's/grandma's cloth diapers and pins anymore - think velcro closures, cute covers, and even ones that you use once and then throw the whole thing in the wash!), and ended up ordering a trial pack through the "Changing Diapers, Changing Minds" program at Jillian's Drawers. Essentially, they sent us a sampling of several different types and brands of cloth diapers to try risk free. We could keep the ones we like, return the ones we didn't for a full refund minus $10. It is a GREAT program for anyone considering cloth.



We have certainly found what we do and don't like, and I have returned some to Jillian's Drawers and have ordered our permanent stash! So, I guess despite my hesitation and concern over the time investment (YES, it is more time, but not much and completely manageable once you have the hang of it) and the whole swishing poopy diapers in the toilet thing, we are going green in the diapering world.



It doesn't hurt that Mia just looks so darn cute in them :)!