10 Months

 Sophia is 10 months old already! How did this happen!? After this, I only have ONE more month post before her first birthday. She sure has a lot of personality, and while we've met quite a few new people over the past 2 weeks, the word that gets used most often to describe her is: friendly. She crawls right over to people and pulls herself up on their legs. We call her our little monkey because she loves to climb (on things and on us - especially while we're holding her) and lunge without any warning.

I think that first picture is perfect and sweet. I think these next 2 show her personality:

- 18.6 lbs (only about half a pound heavier than last month)

- Sophia started crawling a little before 9 1/2 months old. She usually gets really excited when she does it and pants or squeals while she crawls around.

- Since the time last month when Sophia fell asleep sitting up because she simply didn't want to stop playing, no matter how tired she was, she did it about 5 more times. A couple of those times, I actually DID get pictures

This time at least she was close enough to the bars to rest her head on them

- She also pulls herself up on EVERYTHING: chairs, couches, people's legs, and things that aren't supposed to be used for pulling (like the edge of the bathtub or things 6" off the ground). I'll clap for her when she stands up, and she looks extremely proud of herself every time.

Best friends forever!

- Her game of peek-a-boo has evolved (we were playing with her in our empty apartment):

- When Sophia was a newborn, I thought she had a lot of kitten-like traits. Now, she's all puppy. She carries things around in her mouth while she crawls, she gets into things and makes messes, and she whines for food when people eat around her.

- I've noticed that she's not quite so crazy about baby food anymore. She still eats lots of it, but she's a lot more excited about eating little pieces of "real" food that she can feed herself. In fact, when I give her baby food or cereal, she'll open her mouth for the spoon but then also put her hand to her mouth, I guess to shove the food in like she would if she were feeding herself.

- Although I thought Sophia would be able to make more sounds than she does, she's very good at communicating with us. She still says "mama" and for a while she would say "yeah yeah", perhaps as her own version of "dada". Now she'll hardly babble at all. Instead she does a high-pitched shriek, a low-pitched sort of growl, buzz her lips, make fishy kiss sounds back and forth with us, or just say "uh" or "eh" over and over until she gets our attention (she especially does that in the car or back and forth with me while she's drinking a bottle). She also thinks its HILARIOUS when she hands us her toys and we put them in our mouth. She laughs and then takes the toys and gives them back over and over again.

- Her motor skills took off this month. Between the ages of 9 and 10 months, she started to do a lot of new things: crawling, standing, feeding herself, waving 'bye bye', shaking/hitting things to imitate us, sometimes walking along the furniture, and dancing (gotta get a video of that). :)

- Her newest trick is...well...it's hard to explain, but makes for an adorable video:

 (She normally does it longer than this, but did not feel like performing when she could instead be trying to grab the camera. You can also see in the video she can do it, too - which is nice when we're in the car because she can entertain herself)

- For the week we were in transition and moving, I don't think she quite knew how to handle all the changes. She was REALLY emotional and did lots of crying. Luckily, now that she's back into her routine and sleeping in her own crib, life is good again.

Crying in this picture because we wouldn't let her grab her 2 week old baby cousin's face!

I like these 2 pictures. I was just taking them to test the focus and lighting on our new lens, but they're funny if you look at them carefully.

You can see the gleam in Sophia's eye in the first picture. 

Then in the second picture, she has stolen the ball from Lucy!

Photo Shoot Bloopers: Sophia actually did quite well this time. She was so excited to see that lion, she cuddled it immediately, but she was not willing to sit still for long. I had to reposition her after every picture because things like this kept happening...