I'm 10 months old!

It's hard to believe that our little tweety-bird is 10 months old, actually over that due to my blog-slacking! She is full on crawling now. In fact, she is a super-crawler. She is fast as hell and I feel like all I do is follow her.

At least she looks back to make sure I'm watching...

She's a funny little birdling. You never know what is going to make her laugh. One day she's ticklish, the next she's not. Just tonight, Buzz was changing her and she dropped a toy off the side of the changing table and Buzz went to pick it up and said, "Noooooooo," and that cracked her up. Grandma Jeanie makes her laugh like crazy too. And Otis, she thinks he is hilarious. She has no fear of the dogs, or any dog for that matter. In fact we have to be on a much higher alert now because she will crawl up to the dogs and grab a toy right from their mouths. And guess where she tries to put said toy?

She's smart too. She knows what remotes go to what things. When she picks up the fan remote she looks to the fan. When she picks up the robot remote, she looks to the robot.

She doesn't sit in her car seat in the shopping carts anymore. Now she sits in one of those germ-proof Floppy Seat covers. It's kind of embarrassing walking in with one of those but it's so much nicer than her chewing on the shopping cart.

Her eating habits are changing. She doesn't like chunks in baby food - like the pasta seen below. She'll suck off the sauce and then spew back all of the pasta. She still won't eat many green baby foods but bring on the orange. Sometimes she looks like she's turning orange though. She loves people food and really enjoyed my parents' corned beef and cabbage and later the corned beef hash. She's just like her dad in his love for that food. But like me, she loves cheese.

This poor kid is going to rock that baby tub until she's ten or we move out of our townhouse and she gets her own bathtub. I don't want to bathe her where we shower and the dogs get baths.

She pulls up on everything and has just recently started cruising (very slowly) around her music table and the coffee table.

She is into everything now. Especially, emptying things like purses, toy-bins, Kleenex boxes, make-up bags and shopping bags. She'll protest with a cat-like complaint when we move her or take something away.

Sometimes, she listens when we say no and that is a great feeling that I'm sure won't be lasting very long. Now I know why people child-proof their homes. It's not because they don't want their kid breaking stuff, it's cuz they don't want to say no 3 million times a day! All those no's can't be good for a kid's self-esteem.

She refuses to nap with any regularity and has gone days with less than 1/2 hour nap total. I have tried mixing up the times and letting her cry it out and standing on my head but she is usually ready to rock after a twenty-minute nap. REALLY ELLA? REALLY? But she's so cute that I have to rescue her from her crib when she gets up. She sleeps great in the car but always wakes up when we get to our destination.

She's feeding herself too and Buzz hates the way she looks when this happens.

We've had some nice days and have gotten outside a bit. She is content whether I'm chatting up the neighbors or we're strolling down the street.

We had to get the dreaded baby gate. The only one that would work for our space has a really small opening and it hard to get through with a car seat but at least it keeps Otis away from the front door. She's climbed a few stairs but we're pretending that it never happened because we don't want to buy our second baby gate just yet.

She's babbling and talking more and more. I think that she thinks Buzz and I are both Dada. She seems to refer to both of us as this. I remember my nephew, Blake, calling my sister dad or daddy for awhile.

While getting ready to write this post I was thinking to myself that I didn't take that many pictures this month. But when I opened up Picasa, I saw to my horror that I'd taken 417 so far - and the month isn't over! And those are just the good ones. I need a new hobby or my computer is going to crash again.