10 Months of Hazel

** Late posting again! We've been busy beavers! **

Dear Hazel,

At 10 months old you have now lived outside my belly for longer than you were inside it (including the 12 days you were overdue). For me, that’s a big milestone, but you are oblivious to it. What you do know, is how much fun you are having practicing all your new skills.

You weigh 18.2 lbs and are 29.5 inches long. You are wearing 9 month-12 month clothes with some 18 month pants as well. Your food has expanded so much that I can’t list them all anymore. You are still nursing and eating purees. Some new flavors are peppers, strawberries, peaches, and zucchini. We’ve been giving you a lot more table foods though, and whatever we have that we think you can eat little pieces of, we let you try (excluding the really sugary stuff and mammals). We haven’t really come across anything that you haven’t liked!

You can now say “mama!” although you still don’t use it as a name for me… I just like hearing you say it. Your dad thinks you say “Amy” sometimes when you are blubbering, but again, it’s not intentional. You have intentionally said “Hay-yo” after we’ve said hello! You’ve done it enough times, that we’re counting it as your first word. It also seems like a lot of your noises are actually attempts at speaking now, and that some of them actually have meaning that we just haven’t picked up on yet. You can “woof” and “moo” too. You sign “more” and “all done.”

You’re becoming an excellent patty-caker, recently mastering the rolling part and starting to pitch them in the pan as well. We taught you how fun it is to move a finger up and down on your lips to make silly sounds and you often try to do it yourself, but you still like the sound better when we help you out and let you use our fingers.

A major event happened the day after Christmas when you TOOK YOUR FIRST STEPS! You took a hesitant first step and kinda fell over. I documented it by writing it down and saying that it wouldn’t be long before you were successful, and sure enough, about 10 minutes later you took a few steps all by yourself.  You were carrying a coupon (that we’ve had around since Halloween) and going back and forth between me and your dad. It was a big moment however, you haven’t really walked since. You tried a couple times at daycare but they weren’t there to catch you like us, so you fell down (backwards like a plank apparently, not bending and landing on your tush) and maybe scared yourself. So you’re waiting to walk again, and that’s fine.

You are great at walking along our furniture though! You pull yourself up and are cruising around everything. Sometimes you’ll push a chair across the room or hang onto the back of your little toy car. You also stand for long periods of time unassisted and can control your ability to squat down again.

When we turn on a good beat, you are ready to do some dancing! I love the way you bounce your knees to the music or bob up and down if you’re seated. You have a bunch of toys that sing now and you really get a kick out of them (and they get stuck in my head ALL THE TIME).

You are sleeping through the night more than not recently, and it has been great!! All that sleep has been good for all the learning you’re doing, I’m sure. You are becoming more opinionated and throw mini tantrums occasionally; especially getting upset when we take something away from you. But life is full of disappointments (along with all the wonderful things) and I hope we can teach you to handle them with grace… eventually. For now, your disappointment doesn’t last long, though you shed some tears, you move on to the next thing pretty quickly… and sleep tends to cure all bad moods.

I can already see that you’re not going to be a baby baby much longer. Soon you will be toddling around getting more and more independent. But I have no doubt that you will continue to be our brightest star. You have captured our hearts completely, and though it’s important that we keep our own identities outside of being parents, sometimes it’s fun to get lost in your universe and let ourselves just revolve around you, our little sunshine.

Loving you as much as ever,

Momma

{  Approximately 41 weeks in and 41 weeks out  }

{  Her new friend Dustin Beaver  } 

{  Play date with friend/neighbor, Sam!  }

{  Family Vaca to Southern Illinois  }

{  Giant City State Park  }

{  Ferne Clyffe Waterfall  }

{  We went to Hazel's yoga class  }

{  Does it look like she likes it?  }




I've been having issues with my videos, so once I get it sorted out, I'll need to make a video post! Cuz we gotta show off those first steps!! <3

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