From The Ground Up: Lilah: 11 Months

My Sweet Baby Angel,

You are 11 months old today! How on earth do I have an almost one year old?! I called your pediatrician's office the other day to schedule your one year well visit and I found myself stumbling over saying the word "year." I'm so used to saying 6 months, 9 months, etc. So, when it came to me saying one year out loud it completely threw me off.

You are growing up so quickly and we're seeing your little personality come out more and more. For the most part, you are one happy girl!! However, we have seen your strong-willed personality come out a few times lately. You let us know when you don't want to do something or if you are mad when we take something that you shouldn't be playing with away from you. When you get mad, you'll arch your back and throw your head back so dramatically.

You are very independent. You want to do everything yourself. We have known this for a long time now. However, I guess I didn't realize how evident it was to others until we left you in the church nursery one Sunday and the staff (who had only spent about an hour with you) commented on what a little independent girl you were. They said you wanted to feed yourself and didn't want to be babied.

You are very vocal and love to "talk." You say a lot of "ba-ba" and "da-da." Still no "mama." But, I'm working on that. You know how to wave bye-bye and also say bye-bye when you wave sometimes. You are a clapper! :) You love to clap and you smile real big when you do so. You love it when we cheer for you after you've done something and you'll clap along with us.

Some of your favorite toys right now are: dinosaur walking toy, leapfrog magnetic farm, plastic bottles, ball, and anything noisy like rattles. You still love your Singing Baby and Praise Baby DVDs.

You are still eating grown up food and have been completely off of purees for the about a month and a half. You were never a big fan of being spoon-fed. So, we went ahead and cut out the purees all together and moved onto table food. You love to eat! You eat everything!! You are not a picky eater. Some of your favorites are pizza, watermelon, bananas, and chicken. You also love your Puffs and Gerber cookies. You still drink about five 6 oz bottles a day. We are really trying to cut down on these but you love your bottles. You are now on strictly formula (we stopped breastfeeding last month) and I'm sure we'll be making the transition to cow's milk pretty soon. Looking forward to that day...formula is expensive!!

You are sleeping pretty well at night. After "bubbles" (your bath), we get you ready for bed. You go down between 6:30 and 7:00pm. We do a little rocking while you have your bedtime bottle, but you are usually stretching to get out of our arms and into your crib. You fall asleep so well on your own. You usually wake up around 3:00am and you'll take either a bottle of formula or water while in your crib and you put yourself back to sleep. You wake up for the day between 5:30 and 6:00am. This is perfect for the weekday but not so good on weekends. On days we can sleep in, I can usually get you to go back down until about 7:00am. You are an early riser and are so ready to start the day!

Big News!! You are now taking your first few steps unassisted! A couple days ago (5/22/12), you took 6 whole steps all by yourself!! Unfortunately, I got home late that day and Papa was the one who witnessed it. For me, you've only taken one or two.