10 Months: Talking and EatingAbigail's made some dramatic changes this month: she began talking in earnest and switched from getting tastes of food to needing three meals a day or she gets really hungry. It's astonishing how fast she goes from a little blobby person who has very little resemblance to what she'll be as an adult to the person we will recognize the rest of her life. Ten months marks the point at which she's been out for us to see as long as she was in, and we get a better look at who she is by the day.
She chatters almost constantly and it's often hard for us to tell exactly what she's saying, but we've begun picking up on a few phrases she uses frequently. She asks "Whatcha doing?", "what dat?", "where going?", "bite?" (she wants a taste of something), "get down?" and "up?" (she wants to be picked up). She also now says "Pah" for please when she'd like something, "all done" for a lot of different things that don't necessarily make sense, "ball", "block", "jee-jew" (feed you - she wants me to nurse her) and "Hi Dad". |
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There are a lot of other things she'll blurt out in context but they aren't regular things she said, such as the time John had a block from her block box and she crawled indignantly to me and announced "my bock!!" She went through a short time last week where she was calling Ben "Ben" all the time and we kept saying, "That's 'Dad' to you, Abigail" and she seems to have reverted to Dad for the moment. She has a very clear, high-pitched little voice my Mom says sounds like Pebbles from "The Flintstones". I leave the bones out of her hair, though.
Much to my delight, she has just decided that there is at least one other important person in her life besides Mom and his name is Dad. She comes racing to greet him when he comes home and asks throughout the day where he is and if we can call him on the phone (she finds my phone and holds it up to me saying, "Dad? Dad?"). She also will ask for him to pick her up now and will voluntarily sit on his lap without going into "crisis mode" where she lays there unhappily sucking her thumb and waiting for him to give her to me.
There are other favorite people whom she greets, but I won't list everyone for fear of leaving someone out. I'm very pleased to see her enjoying other people though, especially as I'm sort of functioning through the all-day blahs I get in place of morning sickness. As much as I love her attention and desire to stay right by me - this makes so many things so much easier! - I have the knowledge sitting more plainly in my mind by the day that the time is rapidly approaching when I will have another newborn to care for and feed and Abigail will be a much happier girl if she loves spending time with Daddy too.
Abigail can stand alone this month and is sort of like a cartoon character who walks on thin air as long as they don't look down. She will stand as long as she doesn't realize she's standing but when she does she starts shaking and gets scared. She's walking around furniture and between chairs, though, which makes me think we probably have about six or eight weeks until she's walking. Mom Turner says her children did this for months without walking, but physically Abigail seems more like my family even though she doesn't have my family's general build. Her movements and activity level and babbling are coming along more as the babies in my family and not as much like Ben's family. And when babies in my family began standing and walking along things, it was usually a pretty short time until they walked. The talking thing is surprisingly early, though. We always thought she was a chatterbox, but I expected a few more months before she would be conversing on the level she is. I do like being able to talk with her, though, and because she's asking questions I know a lot more what to say to her rather than feeling kind of like I'm talking to myself.
Grandma Lila thinks she must be a prodigy, but I was speaking quite young and it turned out I had very normal intelligence levels so I think language is just something that comes easily to Abigail. There'll be other things that come slower.
I discovered about halfway through the month that nursing for meals with a few tastes of food if she wants some is no longer sufficient to keep Abigail fed. She was getting very weepy and unhappy at dinnertime a few times this month and I finally realized they were days where she'd only had a bite or two of regular food during the day. She would start to nurse and stop and cry. I realized this was my cue that I had to make the turnover to feeding her meals and nursing her in between so that nursing has become the supplement where regular food used to be. It makes me a little sad, but then babies are always born intended for eating real food their whole lives and when their digestion matures, that's what they need to do. Abigail seems to be constantly cutting a new tooth and she is handling food like a champ, so...the time has just come. As of now, she seems to be doing just fine with all the major food allergens: wheat, eggs, dairy, nuts (though I'm holding back on peanuts for a while), citrus, chocolate and tomatoes don't seem to give her any trouble at all. No rashes, no stomach upset, no intestine problems, nothing. When I think back to her first four months when she always seemed to have a stomachache and I couldn't eat any dairy at all or she'd have a problem, this new cast-iron stomach of hers makes me quite relieved. She very much enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, especially cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie. I'm pretty sure she got a taste of everything, even my tea which she's growing quite fond of since she always wants a taste of whatever I'm drinking.
We also had two colds this month, the first she's been sick since she was a tiny infant. She seems to have a good strong immune system and gets over a cold in two days that takes the rest of us over a week to heal from. I'm still hoping it's a long, long time until she gets a stomach bug.
Abigail finds a variety of things to keep her busy during the day now that it's too cold to do much outside. She plays catch with a ball, likes to be chased down the hallway, plays peek-a-boo with clothes and blankets, beeps our noses, finds Daddy's glasses when he puts them on his head and says, "Where'd my glasses go?", dances to music, plays the piano, and likes to take all the tupperware out of the cabinet. She is also learning to put things back in as well as take them out, which makes me happy. Yesterday she spent a while taking all her hair things out of the little plastic tub and then putting them all back in. She throws diapers in the garbage for me and would love to throw things into the toilet too, except I keep catching her before she does it. She "washes" the floor with towels that she takes off the rack on the stove, puts clean washcloths into the laundry basket, and drops things like toys and soap bottles into the shower if she's not sitting in the tub with me while I'm showering. She likes to race up and down the hallway on her hands and knees and watches like a hawk to see if the baby gate on the stairs is ever left open or if the refrigerator door is open. She thinks biting is a mark of affection, which means when she kisses me I'm constantly telling her, "Don't bite me, Abigail". She likes to flap her arms like a little bird when she's excited, stare into my eyes and say gobbledegook in a very serious tone, and cuddle into my neck while saying, "Mmmmmmm" contentedly when I pick her up. She's just figured out where her hair is and likes to rub mine and then hers. This also means she now removes all hair clips instantly. I'd hoped that putting them in from the time she had practically no hair would get her used to hair clips, but she takes them out just as if I never put them in at all. Oh well.
All in all, Abigail seems to be a very busy, very curious, normal little ten-month-old woman. I love her big smile and her clear little voice and the sweetness of her personality that comes through so much more now that she's no longer as crabby as she was at first. For a long time I was a bit worried because she seemed more like a sister than a daughter, but I think it's firmly settled in my mind that she is my daughter and she absolutely is herself and no one else.
And I like her.
Much to my delight, she has just decided that there is at least one other important person in her life besides Mom and his name is Dad. She comes racing to greet him when he comes home and asks throughout the day where he is and if we can call him on the phone (she finds my phone and holds it up to me saying, "Dad? Dad?"). She also will ask for him to pick her up now and will voluntarily sit on his lap without going into "crisis mode" where she lays there unhappily sucking her thumb and waiting for him to give her to me.
There are other favorite people whom she greets, but I won't list everyone for fear of leaving someone out. I'm very pleased to see her enjoying other people though, especially as I'm sort of functioning through the all-day blahs I get in place of morning sickness. As much as I love her attention and desire to stay right by me - this makes so many things so much easier! - I have the knowledge sitting more plainly in my mind by the day that the time is rapidly approaching when I will have another newborn to care for and feed and Abigail will be a much happier girl if she loves spending time with Daddy too.
Abigail can stand alone this month and is sort of like a cartoon character who walks on thin air as long as they don't look down. She will stand as long as she doesn't realize she's standing but when she does she starts shaking and gets scared. She's walking around furniture and between chairs, though, which makes me think we probably have about six or eight weeks until she's walking. Mom Turner says her children did this for months without walking, but physically Abigail seems more like my family even though she doesn't have my family's general build. Her movements and activity level and babbling are coming along more as the babies in my family and not as much like Ben's family. And when babies in my family began standing and walking along things, it was usually a pretty short time until they walked. The talking thing is surprisingly early, though. We always thought she was a chatterbox, but I expected a few more months before she would be conversing on the level she is. I do like being able to talk with her, though, and because she's asking questions I know a lot more what to say to her rather than feeling kind of like I'm talking to myself.
Grandma Lila thinks she must be a prodigy, but I was speaking quite young and it turned out I had very normal intelligence levels so I think language is just something that comes easily to Abigail. There'll be other things that come slower.
I discovered about halfway through the month that nursing for meals with a few tastes of food if she wants some is no longer sufficient to keep Abigail fed. She was getting very weepy and unhappy at dinnertime a few times this month and I finally realized they were days where she'd only had a bite or two of regular food during the day. She would start to nurse and stop and cry. I realized this was my cue that I had to make the turnover to feeding her meals and nursing her in between so that nursing has become the supplement where regular food used to be. It makes me a little sad, but then babies are always born intended for eating real food their whole lives and when their digestion matures, that's what they need to do. Abigail seems to be constantly cutting a new tooth and she is handling food like a champ, so...the time has just come. As of now, she seems to be doing just fine with all the major food allergens: wheat, eggs, dairy, nuts (though I'm holding back on peanuts for a while), citrus, chocolate and tomatoes don't seem to give her any trouble at all. No rashes, no stomach upset, no intestine problems, nothing. When I think back to her first four months when she always seemed to have a stomachache and I couldn't eat any dairy at all or she'd have a problem, this new cast-iron stomach of hers makes me quite relieved. She very much enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, especially cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie. I'm pretty sure she got a taste of everything, even my tea which she's growing quite fond of since she always wants a taste of whatever I'm drinking.
We also had two colds this month, the first she's been sick since she was a tiny infant. She seems to have a good strong immune system and gets over a cold in two days that takes the rest of us over a week to heal from. I'm still hoping it's a long, long time until she gets a stomach bug.
Abigail finds a variety of things to keep her busy during the day now that it's too cold to do much outside. She plays catch with a ball, likes to be chased down the hallway, plays peek-a-boo with clothes and blankets, beeps our noses, finds Daddy's glasses when he puts them on his head and says, "Where'd my glasses go?", dances to music, plays the piano, and likes to take all the tupperware out of the cabinet. She is also learning to put things back in as well as take them out, which makes me happy. Yesterday she spent a while taking all her hair things out of the little plastic tub and then putting them all back in. She throws diapers in the garbage for me and would love to throw things into the toilet too, except I keep catching her before she does it. She "washes" the floor with towels that she takes off the rack on the stove, puts clean washcloths into the laundry basket, and drops things like toys and soap bottles into the shower if she's not sitting in the tub with me while I'm showering. She likes to race up and down the hallway on her hands and knees and watches like a hawk to see if the baby gate on the stairs is ever left open or if the refrigerator door is open. She thinks biting is a mark of affection, which means when she kisses me I'm constantly telling her, "Don't bite me, Abigail". She likes to flap her arms like a little bird when she's excited, stare into my eyes and say gobbledegook in a very serious tone, and cuddle into my neck while saying, "Mmmmmmm" contentedly when I pick her up. She's just figured out where her hair is and likes to rub mine and then hers. This also means she now removes all hair clips instantly. I'd hoped that putting them in from the time she had practically no hair would get her used to hair clips, but she takes them out just as if I never put them in at all. Oh well.
All in all, Abigail seems to be a very busy, very curious, normal little ten-month-old woman. I love her big smile and her clear little voice and the sweetness of her personality that comes through so much more now that she's no longer as crabby as she was at first. For a long time I was a bit worried because she seemed more like a sister than a daughter, but I think it's firmly settled in my mind that she is my daughter and she absolutely is herself and no one else.
And I like her.
