beth & rob @ home

ten: sprout club for girls

Mandy is now ten months old– double digits! Just a couple months until her first birthday!  It’s such a cliche to say that time flies as you watch your children grow, but, seriously. It’s been ten months?  On the one hand it seems like so much time has passed, so much that I can’t remember what it was like to be pregnant or without a second child.  On the other, she is still such a baby to me, so unsophisticated and new.

It has been a month of transitions for our growing bean.  She is communicating with us using frantic gestures and head shakes; when she is finished eating, she shakes her head “no” and pushes the spoon away with her hands.  She claps and laughs with delight because she is clapping.  She even seems to have just started to wave and to push her arms into the air in a triumphant “so big!”  Finally for the first time I have really noticed how she turns when I say her name, and when we ask her to clap she will do it without gestures from us.  It’s a shock when you realize that a child understands you.

But the crowning glory of the month, the triumph that makes me want to take a victory lap around the court with sparklers?  She’s sleeping 12-hour stretches at night, at last.  Not every night, but most nights.  And it is bliss.  I’m grateful that this transition has occurred without needing to resort to any kind of coercion on our part.  In so many ways Mandy remains a mystery to me, but if there is one thing I do know, it is that she has her own time for things, her own schedule, and if I respect it, things will be easy.  Fighting her timing just makes me miserable, so why bother?

Speaking of her own timing, Mandy is quite a baby food pro now, and it is great to see her gobble down a container of yogurt or of some odd food blend.  But table food? We’re still approaching it with a lot of hesitation. She has so far loved cheerios and puffs, and she liked some pumpkin bread I gave her a couple weeks ago.  She also liked some small pieces of chicken this past weekend.  But unlike Ally, who responded to food with an open mouth, Mandy pauses and inspects the mystery, touching it with her finger and often turning her head.  Given her early responses and current success with baby food, I’m trying to think of this caution as another example of timing and not a sign that she will be a picky eater. We’ll see!

Much to our surprise Mandy is not crawling yet, though she did manage a few moves forward this past weekend and she is adroit in rolling and rotating in such a way that she is quite mobile. The thought of a crawling baby in the house turns our thoughts to baby proofing and particularly to Ally’s toys, a.k.a. choking hazards within easy grasp.  I’m not quite sure how to manage a quick moving baby and Ally’s penchant for glitter glue.

Oh, and she has oodles of hair.  And still just two teeth.  And little ears that curl like little shells.  And the most kissable head and fingers and feet put on earth.  Delicious, sweet dumpling.  I love you every little bit.