11 Months

I am woefully "behind" as Lila was 8 months old at my last posting and now she is 11 months old!  I think we had our anniversary, fall festival, my birthday, pie night, Thanksgiving, a stomach bug, and Christmas in quick succession. And now I am planning Lila's first birthday.  How did that happen? A year ago I had weekly appointments with my midwife and held onto the smallest shred of hope that Lila could be born "any day now."  Today I have the sweetest baby with a mop of brown hair, blue eyes, pearly whites, the sweetest grin, and a blossoming desire to explore the world around her!

Lila at 11 months:

Still petite.  That's just the way our babies seem to come.  The Kubo baby mold.  She wears 6 and 6-9 month clothes.  I can get her in some favorite 3-6 months too which worked well to take advantage of AR's Christmas clothes we had saved from 2 years ago.

Still nursing throughout the day and once in the night/morning.  If she hasn't eaten by 6:30, I wake her then to nurse and she goes back to sleep after that.  I found if I let her go all night, I was getting clogged ducts every time!  Plus I find it helpful to feed her then while the big kids are still sleeping and then put Lila back in bed to sleep while I get myself and the big kids ready.  Lila has been very cooperative that way. ;)

Lila naps 1-2 times each day.  Sometimes the morning is barely a catnap and then she takes a long, 2 hr afternoon nap.  Sometimes it's an hour in the morning and 1-1.5 in the afternoon.

She is awake from about 8:30 (give or take depending on school, church, etc.) until bedtime in the 7:00 hour (depending upon when she woke from her afternoon nap).  

Lila is starting to stretch her between-nap awake times past 2 hours.  She's doing more 3 hour stretches in the morning with 4 being her max max max between afternoon nap and bedtime (that sometimes happens on the one nap days).

Lila eats 2-3 (more like 2.5) meals per day!  In the morning she likes toast!  Just plain toast. :). Then she tends to eat a big lunch and a small dinner (she ate more dinner before she started eating breakfast).  She likes sweet potato, butternut squash, carrot, peaches, pears, avocado, oatmeal (I add flax seed meal and sometimes nutritional yeast to boost the vitamin and good fats content), applesauce, banana, puffs, Cheerios, mum-mums, and baby rice cakes.  She learned to drink from a sippy cup with a valve around Christmas.  We have never done juice with our kids, but we are with Lila because she tends to get constipated and the extra calories don't hurt her.  Our pediatrician suggested NOT offering water at this time so we can sneak in extra calories through her drink.  Lila also started eating yogurt--coconut milk yogurt!  Vanilla is her favorite, and she has had blueberry as well (too much makes an unhappy tummy).  Between the splash of apple juice and probiotics in the yogurt, her constipation is finally sorting out!  Yea!!  She's our first baby to struggle with that.

Lila is crawling!  She's "army" crawled since 9ish months.  She actually did the head down snowplow crawl first--like her big bro did.  Right around Christmas she started getting UP on her hands and knees.  She still army crawls some on carpet but is switching over to hands and knees on carpet.  She usually crawls on her hands and knees on the hardwood now and only occasionally army crawls on the hard wood.  She is fast enough we re-installed the gate at the top of the stairs! We had a good run without it (sigh), but it will be around for a couple years now at this point!  

Lila is pulling up on everything she can and toying with letting go to stand and with cruising around/from one object to another.  That + real crawling developed over a 2 week time span.  The girl is on a gross motor roll!

Toward the end of November, Lila tuned a corner with the church nursery.  She stays and is HAPPY.  Sometimes I thought we would never see the day!  Trying (and succeeding) to get her attached to a lovey blanket helped tremendously.  If she gets upset, the nursery can give her Hippo and that helps comfort her.  She GRINS whenever she sees him and reaches out to clutch him to herself.  It's so sweet!

Lila has 4 teeth--her front teeth on the top and bottom.  They are pretty cute. ;)

Lila knows a handful of signs and occasionally uses them unprompted but often when asked.  She signs "more," "all done," and "wash."  We are also working on "drink" and "eat."

She babbles the most in the morning and whenever she is tired.  A lot of dadadada. ;). She gets FULL BODY wiggles and "happy flaps" when she hears Matt's voice or sees Asa or Anna Reaghan.  She loves her family. :). And she knows her name.  If she starts crawling to something and you call her name, she turns to you and grins.  She isn't quite sure yet what to think of Sammy--sometimes she laughs and sometimes she cries.  But Sammy sure likes Lila now hat Lila drops food on the floor. ;)

Lila is ticklish!  She loves our piano toy in the study, AR's dress up shoes, papers of any sort :), taking items out of containers, and pulling books off shelves. ;)

We love our Lila SO very much!!!!