Eleven, ELEVEN!!

Afton is nearly done with being X months old! Yikes!

At 11 months, Afton:

-Has seven teeth. Four on top, three on bottom. She has had three and three for quite some time but recently had her top fourth break through. She is a champ at letting me brush her teeth-she usually wants to do it herself and sometimes does a good job with that.

-Is communicating like crazy! It is so fun to see her comprehend something and recognize that she really knows what I am saying when I talk to her. She signs "all done," "more," & recently "milk." She shakes her head no and claps her hands for yes. It is funny because I have been signing milk to her each time I go to nurse and she never seemed to pay much attention. But then one day I set her on my lap and was getting ready to nurse and she looked straight up at me and signed milk. It was so cute!
-She mimics sounds really well but not all that consistently. She has said (mimicking) "Maggie," (aggie) "Ali," "Afton," "cheese," "love you" and probably lots more.
-She says on her own "uh oh," "dada," "mama," (just twice yesterday!) and animal sounds for monkey, horse, dog, snake & elephant. Yesterday was an eventful day because I laid her down after a nap to change her diaper and she looked at me with concentration and said "mmm" and then whispered slowly "mama." I was thinking, "did she just say what I think she said?" So I hugged and kissed her and said yay! over and over and tried to get her to say it again. She said it once more briefly but ever since she hasn't done it again. We say "mama" to her ALL the time! And I often start with a drawn out "mmm" because that is a sound she had a hard time picking up. But once she started picking up a B sound I thought she should be able to do M. I think she just wants to do things on her own time. :)

Kicking back while eating lunch in her jammies

 

-In the movement department: Afton has mastered going from her tummy to sitting up and back to her tummy. She does it quick and is a lot happier now that she can do just about whatever she wants if a ball rolls away from her or something. She has started pulling herself up on things but isn't too stable yet. She will walk when we hold her hands but is hesitant to use furniture to walk-she just cries until you give her a hand to stabilize herself. Silly girl. We are working on it. She still does her little cripple crawl with one arm stuck underneath her. She gets up on her knees a lot but then goes back to her tummy to move around. But hey, she gets around pretty quick doing that, so I can see how she wouldn't want to take the time to change her tactics.

Letting her terrorize the house is sometimes just easier than fighting her

 

-I tried some little Mary Jane shoes we got as a shower gift on Afton this week since she will soon need to be wearing shoes to walk outside (when it isn't so wet) and she just bawls! She HATES them! I worried that they were too tight or something but they aren't. I can tell she has a little room but I think she is just not used to them so she feels like she can't move with them on. She will just get to her tummy and then cry if she tries to crawl. So we are working on that. I guess in hindsight, I should have had her start wearing shoes earlier to get used to them. But they are such a pain to keep on!

Yesterday we watched my neighbors kids for a couple hours and they have a 3 month old little boy. I felt so out of my element and unsure how to hold him! It was the weirdest feeling. It wasn't that long ago that Afton was that age and yet I could not remember how babies that age liked to be held. He was holding his head up fine but not sitting up and I just struggled for a bit before I could comfortably hold him. What is wrong with me? I thought that now that I have had a child I would know exactly what to do with the next but apparently I am going to have to re-learn a lot! I didn't realize how independent Afton is until I held a baby who couldn't sit up on his own or be happy in front of some toys on the ground. It made me reflect on how much she has grown and changed.

We feel so lucky call Afton ours. She makes everything in our lives more enjoyable. We feel so blessed for her good health and happy nature!