BRITTA: 10 Months Old

RICHLAND, WASH. -- Sweet little Britta has made lots of strides this past month. The biggest thing is that she can stand up! Before you get too excited, she can't stand up on her own and she can't yet pull herself up. But if we stand her up against something, she can stand. And this is huge! She also likes to clap. All the time. It's like she just discovered her hands move at will and she's enjoying it. It's the daintiest little flappy clap. 

We were in California on vacation a few weeks ago and spent the day at Disneyland on her 10 month birthday. She was not feeling 100% (horribly runny nose, watery red eyes) and it was not exactly a fun day for her, but she was a trooper and hardly cried until she was so exhausted she finally passed out for a short nap in the stroller. She loved the beach though, but was a bit frustrated when I wouldn't let her eat the sand. 

Ten Month Old Stats:

• not measured this month

Sleeping: Goes to bed at 7 and usually wakes up around 8 a.m. or sometimes later. Rarely earlier. Has a nap around 12:30 or 1 and sleeps for 2 hours or so.  

Wearing: 12-18 month clothes.  

Interesting tidbits: 
-She now has four teeth. She has that one that popped up last month, and then the top two came down. This week the second bottom tooth arrived! 

-Her little personality is blossoming -- for some reason I feel like it took a while for this to start happening. We view her as such a baby baby, but when Marin was this age she was walking and talking. I'm not saying that to compare my kids, but I think because physically she does less, we sometimes forget that mentally she's so much more capable than what we've been challenging her with. So we've been trying to be better with that. 

-She laughs and giggles more freely (and it also can take a lot of work to get a legit smile sometimes), but she loves interacting with her sisters and watches them with wide eyes  and laughs whenever they come close to play with her. She gets shy when strangers approach us and will bury her head into my shoulder-- it's kinda cute. 

-She likes to wave hello and good bye and sometimes when I glance over at her she's waving at me. Last week we started saying, "Who's so big?" and then throw our arms up high in the air and say, "Britta's so big!" And she'll throw her arms up in the air too (or at least try... they don't always go higher than above her shoulders). It was an effort to try to get her to raise her arms straight up-- which she struggles with because her arm strength is pretty low. But she tries, and it is really darling. 

-She sees the physical therapist, Darlene, about every other week. Every time she comes she comments that she can see improvement in Britta. She's either gotten visibly stronger or has strengthened a new skill (like trunk rotating and balancing her core). It's encouraging to hear this-- especially after picking Britta up a few weeks ago, she indicated Britta was the lowest toned baby she currently works with-- an observation she made when she realized it was still like picking up a newborn when you try to pick up Britta under her arms. 

This is a really terrible photo of Paige. ha ha ha

In line at the Snow White ride at Disneyland

Poor thing didn't feel too hot that day and it was 90 degrees there!

Swinging is a newly discovered joy.